in a way. One of the managers of a sister company was looking to cut down expenditures and suggested shrinking IT since the computers never go wrong anyway...
Exactly - you support everyone else. I used to work in IT (while in college) and now I am an engineer. I would say that the IT people think they are superior, but really, they are just here as support - much like the people that clean the building I work in
- Oct 28, 1999
- 62,484
- 8,345
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I know the thread is *largely* in jest, but there's still a lot of arrogance on both sides.
Since when does the ability to directly generate money make a department more or less important? Or a support department less important since it doesn't generate money?
The HR department in a major company doesn't make money, but they can save a company very, very large amounts of money by protecting the company from things that would encourage lawsuits, labor fines, and by restructuring benefits to provide a savings to a company.
Same thing with IT. While we don't directly generate money in a typical business, we can dramatically reduce money spent by the company. We can provide interfaces that eliminate the need for hours upon hours of manual labor. We can provide tools that let users make better use of their time and be more productive. We can implement technologies like VOIP that can greatly reduce monthly bills.
When things ultimately do go bad, we are there to respond as fast and as reliably as possible to get the company back up and running. Every minute that a system is down or data is unavailable, the company is losing time in lost productivity. Getting people back up and running quickly is a critcal part of the job.
Support departments don't directly produce money for a company. Whether this be an in house support group maintaining a network and IT equipment, or it be a help desk that answers calls from customers. If a company doesn't have a functioning network or systems, that company can't operate.
If a company like Dell doesn't have a support desk that customers can call into, then they lose a sale to a company that does provide support.
Engineers just design a product. They don't directly generate money. Sales people are the ones actually getting it sold. But neither group actually *PRODUCES* the product, that is the manufacturing division. They don't really make money either. But you can't sell something without having it made. But the sales guys can't always sell something without a marketing group making sure that your product is known. And marketing is typically a money pit. Accountants usually don't make money for a company, but they sure know how it's being spent. How about the janitorial service? They sure don't make money for a company, but if the bathrooms are never clean, the trash is never taken out, and facility is in a state of squalor, who wants to work there?
All I'm trying to say is that there are many parts of a company that don't directly produce revenue. None of us should be so arrogant to think that a single division is more important than another. Ultimately, we are all replaceable. There will always be somebody that is smarter than you and/or willing to work for less money than you do wanting your job.
Businesses make money. Departments don't (typically). Every part of a company relies on other parts to allow them to do their job.
My example pertains to a typical "design, build, market, sell, support" type company. Obviously it doesn't work for all makes of companies such as support only types of companies.
Since when does the ability to directly generate money make a department more or less important? Or a support department less important since it doesn't generate money?
The HR department in a major company doesn't make money, but they can save a company very, very large amounts of money by protecting the company from things that would encourage lawsuits, labor fines, and by restructuring benefits to provide a savings to a company.
Same thing with IT. While we don't directly generate money in a typical business, we can dramatically reduce money spent by the company. We can provide interfaces that eliminate the need for hours upon hours of manual labor. We can provide tools that let users make better use of their time and be more productive. We can implement technologies like VOIP that can greatly reduce monthly bills.
When things ultimately do go bad, we are there to respond as fast and as reliably as possible to get the company back up and running. Every minute that a system is down or data is unavailable, the company is losing time in lost productivity. Getting people back up and running quickly is a critcal part of the job.
Support departments don't directly produce money for a company. Whether this be an in house support group maintaining a network and IT equipment, or it be a help desk that answers calls from customers. If a company doesn't have a functioning network or systems, that company can't operate.
If a company like Dell doesn't have a support desk that customers can call into, then they lose a sale to a company that does provide support.
Engineers just design a product. They don't directly generate money. Sales people are the ones actually getting it sold. But neither group actually *PRODUCES* the product, that is the manufacturing division. They don't really make money either. But you can't sell something without having it made. But the sales guys can't always sell something without a marketing group making sure that your product is known. And marketing is typically a money pit. Accountants usually don't make money for a company, but they sure know how it's being spent. How about the janitorial service? They sure don't make money for a company, but if the bathrooms are never clean, the trash is never taken out, and facility is in a state of squalor, who wants to work there?
All I'm trying to say is that there are many parts of a company that don't directly produce revenue. None of us should be so arrogant to think that a single division is more important than another. Ultimately, we are all replaceable. There will always be somebody that is smarter than you and/or willing to work for less money than you do wanting your job.
Businesses make money. Departments don't (typically). Every part of a company relies on other parts to allow them to do their job.
My example pertains to a typical "design, build, market, sell, support" type company. Obviously it doesn't work for all makes of companies such as support only types of companies.
But until the average end-user becomes a little more computer literate, courteous, and uses a bit more common sense, the IT staff won't lose their self-righteous attitude, because it's the only defence mechanism they have left.
- M4H
The original post sucks because it is just the 'other side' of the argument which is only half-right.
The only people that have to remind an IT person that they don't generate any money are usually people who, themselves, are completely fvcking arrogant. The fact is, every person in a company works towards a product. Whether you are the janitor, the IT guy or the engineer, you are all a balanced part of the whole. The sooner you realize this and treat each other with respect, the better.
I've met a lot of arrogant IT people. Mainly because a lot of IT people in companies are 'promoted from within' from things such as the mail room or other random non-technical jobs. They become arrogant as a way of protecting the fact that they don't know. They learn very quickly that if you sound like you know what you're talking about and don't leave room for question, you don't get any questions.
There is also another side of it though. There are a lot of very knowledgable people in IT and these people usually get beaten to sh!t by the system. Not only do they have to do their own work, they have to fix everyones mistakes, cover the tracks of their co-workers and answer to anything that ever goes wrong. Because god forbid something breaks and you don't know exactly why it happened within 15 minutes.
Oh yea, and then theres budget. Every company, EVERY company cuts their IT budget first. The end result is a budget that never meets the demands of the business. Of course the business does not see this first hand, they see it second hand, by techs that do rush jobs, work arounds, servers that can't handle a load, untrained staff, etc.
So yea, there you go, maybe if everyone was just a little less arrogant, the world would be better.
The only people that have to remind an IT person that they don't generate any money are usually people who, themselves, are completely fvcking arrogant. The fact is, every person in a company works towards a product. Whether you are the janitor, the IT guy or the engineer, you are all a balanced part of the whole. The sooner you realize this and treat each other with respect, the better.
I've met a lot of arrogant IT people. Mainly because a lot of IT people in companies are 'promoted from within' from things such as the mail room or other random non-technical jobs. They become arrogant as a way of protecting the fact that they don't know. They learn very quickly that if you sound like you know what you're talking about and don't leave room for question, you don't get any questions.
There is also another side of it though. There are a lot of very knowledgable people in IT and these people usually get beaten to sh!t by the system. Not only do they have to do their own work, they have to fix everyones mistakes, cover the tracks of their co-workers and answer to anything that ever goes wrong. Because god forbid something breaks and you don't know exactly why it happened within 15 minutes.
Oh yea, and then theres budget. Every company, EVERY company cuts their IT budget first. The end result is a budget that never meets the demands of the business. Of course the business does not see this first hand, they see it second hand, by techs that do rush jobs, work arounds, servers that can't handle a load, untrained staff, etc.
So yea, there you go, maybe if everyone was just a little less arrogant, the world would be better.
"Engineers build products that we can sell. Sales people sell these products and bring us money."
man what utopian company are you working for.....
let me explain how this part really works....
marketing comes up with a concept..never ever bothering to ask engineering for input.
salesmen go out and by some act of God actually sell it...
marketing/sales informs engineering about said 'project' and ridiculous deadline they pulled out their ass.
engineeing replies: WTF are crazy, no way in the hell can be build a cold fusion reactor in two weeks complete with a jiggawatt capacitor!!!
sales team: no prob we will fix this
sales goes talks to customer and replies: oh they also want you to add a time portal device to it...and um make it handheld...
sales: it is sooo east to build I used to be an engineering..... secretary so i know you guys can whip one out in no time, let me know if you need my engineering expertise we can buy everything we need at dell, i even have an account.
throw in a lot of fancy shmancy catch phrases for sales and marketing and about a billion hours wasting having meetings where everything is rehashed over and over.
man what utopian company are you working for.....
let me explain how this part really works....
marketing comes up with a concept..never ever bothering to ask engineering for input.
salesmen go out and by some act of God actually sell it...
marketing/sales informs engineering about said 'project' and ridiculous deadline they pulled out their ass.
engineeing replies: WTF are crazy, no way in the hell can be build a cold fusion reactor in two weeks complete with a jiggawatt capacitor!!!
sales team: no prob we will fix this
sales goes talks to customer and replies: oh they also want you to add a time portal device to it...and um make it handheld...
sales: it is sooo east to build I used to be an engineering..... secretary so i know you guys can whip one out in no time, let me know if you need my engineering expertise we can buy everything we need at dell, i even have an account.
throw in a lot of fancy shmancy catch phrases for sales and marketing and about a billion hours wasting having meetings where everything is rehashed over and over.
shortylickens
No Lifer
- Jul 15, 2003
- 80,287
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In 3 years this is the only thread I have ever wanted to make a favorite.
I wonder....... if a company were to go all Apple, would they be able to hire less IT people?
Not that I like macs, but for work sometimes they seem a little better.
I wonder....... if a company were to go all Apple, would they be able to hire less IT people?
Not that I like macs, but for work sometimes they seem a little better.
There are exception to every rule. OH and as one other posted, Helpdesk is not IT. IT does alot more then the helpdesk does. Our IT department generates alot of money for our company. Then again, we have our end users rate their experience with us and we do very well. We work hard for our staff and in return they do their best to help us, aka remembering what we tell them, describing the problem, etc... Don't generalize, there are alot of really good IT departments out there. Anyway now that I've been here for 9 hours and was only supposed to be here 8, I'm going home.
Phoenix86
Lifer
- May 21, 2003
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notfred, I'm so with you here, and I'm in IT.
One thing you miss, engineers can't make products and the sales people can't sell if the PCs aren't running right. Infrastructure is just as important.
That being said there is likely good reasons for many practices. I won't try to justify everything a crappy IT shop does, but I'll throw myself out there to try to explain the reasonable stuff.
None of the software you saw was licensed. That's the way it comes. MS ships every disk you will ever need, so when you buy the license, you don't need to wait for the physical disk. Anyways, just because they had the disk, doesn't mean they have the license. It's, umm, bad to install unlicensed software and could cost the IT person their job to install something before it's licensed.
Not sure why you didn't get the version you asked for, but my questions is: why did the person signing the PO sign if it was the wrong version? Again, it could be a totally fvcked IT shop and that's why the ball was dropped. I'm just giving you the story from the IT side too.
Helpdesk *IS* IT, what other dept do you folks put Helpdesk in? Accounting? Sales? No, it's IT, quit splitting hairs...
One thing you miss, engineers can't make products and the sales people can't sell if the PCs aren't running right. Infrastructure is just as important.
That being said there is likely good reasons for many practices. I won't try to justify everything a crappy IT shop does, but I'll throw myself out there to try to explain the reasonable stuff.
POs have to be signed, I have waited for months for management to sign them before. That *may* not be ITs fault.
You likely saw their MSDN or VLA library. It has every piece of active MS software in it, we have one too.
None of the software you saw was licensed. That's the way it comes. MS ships every disk you will ever need, so when you buy the license, you don't need to wait for the physical disk. Anyways, just because they had the disk, doesn't mean they have the license. It's, umm, bad to install unlicensed software and could cost the IT person their job to install something before it's licensed.
Not sure why you didn't get the version you asked for, but my questions is: why did the person signing the PO sign if it was the wrong version? Again, it could be a totally fvcked IT shop and that's why the ball was dropped. I'm just giving you the story from the IT side too.
Helpdesk *IS* IT, what other dept do you folks put Helpdesk in? Accounting? Sales? No, it's IT, quit splitting hairs...
HomeBrewerDude
Lifer
- Jan 18, 2001
- 14,465
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HeroOfPellinor
Lifer
- Dec 27, 2001
- 11,272
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A company needs both Strategic/Planning and Support roles to survive. However, if layoffs are necessary, you know who's going first.
oh the joy of the academic setting where you & the undergrads/grads around you are your own IT staff
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