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Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way to Retrain Old IT Workers?
A medium-sized company just hired a new IT manager who wants advice from the Slashdot community about their two remaining IT "gofers":
These people have literally been here their entire "careers" and are now near retirement. Quite honestly, they do not have any experience other than reinstalling Windows, binding something to the domain and the occasional driver installation -- and are more than willing to admit this. Given many people are now using Macs and most servers/workstations are running Linux, they have literally lost complete control over the company, with most of these machines sitting around completely unmanaged.
Firing these people is nearly impossible. (They have a lot of goodwill within other departments, and they have quite literally worked there for more than 60 years combined.) So I've been tasked with attempting to retrain these people in the next six months. Given they still have to do work (imaging computers and fixing basic issues), what are the best ways of retraining them into basic network, Windows, Mac, Linux, and "cloud" first-level help desk support?
Monster_user had some suggestions -- for example, "Don't overtrain. Select and target areas where they will be able to provide a strong impact." Any other good advice?
Leave your best answers in the comments. What's the best way to retrain old IT workers?
Firing these people is nearly impossible. (They have a lot of goodwill within other departments, and they have quite literally worked there for more than 60 years combined.) So I've been tasked with attempting to retrain these people in the next six months. Given they still have to do work (imaging computers and fixing basic issues), what are the best ways of retraining them into basic network, Windows, Mac, Linux, and "cloud" first-level help desk support?
Monster_user had some suggestions -- for example, "Don't overtrain. Select and target areas where they will be able to provide a strong impact." Any other good advice?
Leave your best answers in the comments. What's the best way to retrain old IT workers?
Seriously, what's the point? The company moved to Mac and Linux, and these two did nothing to keep themselves relevant? It ain't hard to learn how to install and maintain OS X and Linux, FFS.
They're likely going to be doorstops now matter how you train them.
In the military, these two would be referred to as "Retired On Active Duty".
And yes, I hope those two "workers" read this.
People honest enough to admit their shortcomings, are probably quite able to tell where they can still be a good contribution. This late in the game, they must have ownership of their tasks, or they will hold everybody else up.
Sounds like they are well liked and have excellent people skills. Use that. 1st level help desk, training new employees, vendor contact, IT intranet, etc.
Look, it's very unlikely that senior admin staff has not bothered following the evolution of the IT hardware of its own company. Because, how can you actually do your job if it does not happen?
Maybe you have another situation on your hand, such as a team of people who were working on something else and have been relocated to admin. They're probably not super happy about it, too.
Then your job is probably not to retrain them (IT staff can train itself), but to remotivate them, if that is actually possible. How to do that, I don't know. There must be a way to give value to their experience (you don't seem to feel they have any but really you don't spend a full career in a company doing nothing), to put their current skills to good use. Assess those skills, find a way to put them to good use, and only then, think of how you can get them to fit the positions they've been relocated to. Maybe the problem will sort itself out when they realize their new position has moved away from punishment, to something exciting. IT people even old enjoy new challenges. It's just you have to get them into that mindset.
Cheers,
a manager
I'd relish a change - jobs like ours is very boring and monotonous and being required to learn something new and the having the luxury of learning on the job would thrill me to death.
And folks need to remember that aside from the fact that those folks aren't keeping up - it's now a performance issue - the EEOC is very easy to get around. And I once heard of someone who actually won an EEOC suite. They got a whole $50K to split with their lawyer - after 7 years of court battles.
Old farts like the above give us other old farts a bad name. Soylent Green them.
Hire some entry-level admins who already know what you need. This will be cheaper over the long run.
It's people like you that are destroying our society.
One word: old people. Yeah, I know. They want me to work with them.
We all know they can't be trained or communicated with.
How do I phrase this question like I will actually take any advice?
Seriously, what did the company do during the last 10 years? No training?
I'm 65 and have skills with Linux, OpenBSD and OSX. I can set up nameservers and mailservers with OpenBSD and Linux. I have also been trained on industrial aircondition and installing fibreoptics. All due to industrial training and personal training.
What is up with that company management? Why have incentives for employees to learn and widen their skills been dropped years ago? Have the employees already been branded as "old" when they crossed the line of 40?
"basic network, Windows, Mac, Linux, and "cloud" first-level help desk support" is pretty wide and vague. Specifically, what kind of issues are they unable to address? First step would be to go over all the help desk tickets and see just what tickets come up most often that these employees need to be able to address. Then, start pinning down how to fix these issues under each OS, writing up comprehensive knowledge base articles as you go along. Use this as an opportunity to implement an actual knowledge base system, that can be used and expanded on by all your IT people.
My guess is tasks like updating network settings, adding printers, and troubleshooting permissions / domain credentials would be the major issues your helpdesk encounters. Make your knowledge base very specific, copy-n-paste type of instructions (especially if dealing with the command line). Utilize the fact that your Macs are somewhat POSIX compliant, so much of the training for Mac and Linux can be dual-use at least for "under the hood" items like I outlined.
You'll need some type of lab too, with machines that mimic your environment for them to train on. As for "the cloud", your vendor should be able to provide training for this. Since these people also know many other people in the org, leverage that as well. You should probably form a cross-sectional "advisory board" (borrowing from ITIL) that includes some users too to see what issues they commonly have that need to be addressed.
If you are a Journeyman in the field of IT, people don't train and update your knowledge, you do it for yourself. People who are good at this trade are also good at educating themselves and learning in general. People who aren't good at it might get a little better with training but they were probably not very good to begin with.
We'll make great pets
"Old IT Workers". It is one more stereotype. There are weak "Young IT Workers" too.
For example, one may think that workers in advance age miss work due to illness more often than young workers. It is a stereotype too. The research shows the opposite.
It is due to such managers we have got cute baby-face puppets at about any office and counter who do not have a clue, who do not have any real life experience. And as a result the production goes away from Europe and the US.
I would start with the retraining course "Prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person's age" for this IT manager.
It sounds like they have loads of experience, but not practical skills for your current setup. Realistically if you were to train them to update their skills they would be just the same as any new (and potentially cheap) hire that you make - this isn't getting the best out of them.
No, what you want to do is take advantage of their experience. I'd be looking to shift their role, and only you can know what slots you have open, or where they may be able to contribute most. If they know everyone, then liasing between departments, IT and the users for example, may be good. They have probably got management skills which are under-utilised, and they will certainly be able to provide mentoring to new and inexperienced team members.
I'd start by talking your thinking through with them (individually) explaining the potential they have, and sounding out what they think they would like to do. You may find they have ideas which you haven't considered. If they want training up, then that is an option, but this is unlikely to be the best for the business.
You were hired to manage two guys who are on their way out. And you can't fire them.
Take that as a lesson in the organizational reality rather than your stated position.
You should consider that your position is not as secure as you think it is, and respond by turning these employees into niche superstars. Help them go out on their high note and you will give yourself a leg up.
They have internal cred. You are the new guy everyone 'above' is evaluating.
It's important to know that the administrative staff and others who hold goodwill toward these subordinates of yours could be your position's catapult, or it's anchor.
Buy a Mac for each of these guys to use at home. Put the Linux distro you're using on the Mac in a VM. Task them with setting up the machine to run remotely on the corporate network under both OSs. They'll have fun learning, and will then be prepared to support others. The gift is also a nice way to reward them for their years of service.
If they couldn't be motivated professionally to learn Other-than-Windows distros which could have benefited them in their job, what the hell makes you think they're going to be motivated personally to learn it?
Sorry. No way in hell would I expend that kind of money and effort until I find out what the hell makes these codgers tick. I'd rather run a vulnerability scan across the network and prove to them that incompetence in maintaining every system properly will lead to disaster.
I doubt the article is about a real company, but let's pretend it is.
So you have these two guys that don't know anything but Windows desktop support, and now you want to train them to be admins for Linux servers?
I call bullshit. What is going on here is that you have Windows server and domain admins that don't want to learn Linux, so they're trying to escape that duty by dumping it on the Desktop guys.
You claim to be a medium size company. Are these two guys clearing their calls and keeping busy for 40+ hours a week or are they sitting on their butts all day? You did not say, but If they're putting in over 40, then adding Linux server support to their jobs means you're being a jerk. The correct thing to do is hire an another admin to manage the servers, or more likely, you need to make your server admins do their jobs.
The two desktop guys do indeed need to be able to do OSX desktop support, and probably smartphone email integration. You'll have to buy them each a OSX box and a book to learn, practice and troubleshoot.
Server admin job is a different job than desktop support (except in small business). It is a different mindset for the most part, and it's not a good idea to mix the roles.
I work for a major defense contractor. I mean big.
We had a guy that was here long before I arrived. He worked with the top level management and was very well regarded.
He did not re-install windows. He did not program. He did not configure switches, routers, or firewalls. He did not build computers, install servers, or anything else.
So what good was he?
He knew everyone who could do these things.
He knew all the policies and procedures and work flows.
He knew how all of these disciplines interacted.
He knew the right way to set up infrastructure for the best supportability and growth.
He knew how to get priorities changed to get support to your project.
If you had an outage of any kind and had 100 people on the manufacturing floor idle, he was the one you called. He coordinated all the disciplines and made sure the problem got resolved.
But he was an old guy who didn't have current skills, so what the fuck use was he, eh?
Maybe this new IT manager should sit down with management and find out why these two have such goodwill. Then talk to them and find out what they really do.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.