IT department incompetencies?

[SSSnail]

Yup, IT and Sec in the same dept. The full exchange server one, it wasn't because someone send out large emails, it was a problem for a few days before they realized "Oh...".

 

[GDaddy]

Originally posted by: paulxcook
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: GDaddy
I work in IT in a big company, they working on a project to centralize everything at corporate, I see the goal they are heading to, but corporate wont say the end result. With this project the better i do on it, the faster i work myself out of a job. I understand the reasoning behind it, and it's not incompetence, but it still irks me. The better i do the sooner i will have to look for a new job.</end quote></div>

Do they think you don't know this project pushes you out of your own job, or do they not care?

Sounds like you need to ignore the project and spend some paid time on CareerBuilder.

They dont care, all a numbers game now.
And a resume is on the list of things to do.

 

[daveshel]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
1. I have no idea what they're doing

/thread

 

[kt]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: SSSnail
You hear it all the time, the PEBKAC, user's errors, ID-10T form for computer users, etc... Well, now here's your chance to fight back. Tell us your stories of incompetencies from your IT department in general.

1. I have no idea what they're doing, but they have to do maintenance EVERYDAY for at least a few hours, and usually end up with outages after the maintenance.
2. Somehow, they allow the exchange server to run out of storage space, resulting in chaos usually.
3. Our VOIP phone system works, sometimes.
4. Hard drive on the exchange server failed, email is down for hours. I don't really know how long it takes them to swap a drive, initialize, check stats...
5. Badge access is iffy, sometimes we have to use another door because the front door just "lost its access control list".
6. They schedule enterprise virus scan during mid day.

</end quote></div>

Here's some thoughts from an IT guy about your ranting:

1. Hey... We IT folks like working weekends just as much as you do! Besides... if something goes wrong with an upgrade during the weekend, good luck finding a smart support tech to help you! Most companies have their third-string support script reading bozos from India on at that time. Every day maintenance is overkill, though. I shoot for Friday afternoons when most people have left for the day.
2. Some bonehead probably forwarded a 50 MB attachment to half of the company. There isn't much you can do to plan for that.

Exchange uses single instance storage of messages. Sorry try again.

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: daveshel
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: SSSnail
1. I have no idea what they're doing

</end quote></div>

/thread

You mean the users don't know more?

 

[eLiu]

The IT department at the Mathworks is excellent. Service requests were always fixed promptly, even little things like "I hate the fact that my enter key is L-shaped"--replaced in a day.

Also they understand that in a big group of programmers/computer nerds, most people understand a thing or two about computers. We all had administrative rights to our workstations and could install/change things as we pleased. As far as I know, that led to 0 problems.

 

[bondboy]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Raduque
Our IT department is so incompetent, they can't even set the correct resolution on an LCD panel. :thumbsdown:

Oh, yea, and they disabled CTRL-N in IE. CTRL-N! I don't understand the mindset of the people who make IT policy. It's like they're on some kind of geek power trip, pissed at getting beat up in high school, so now they take it out on everybody else by setting arbitrary policies that disable the Edit menu and prevent you from right clicking to copy/paste.

I want to smash the head of Apac's IT in the mouth with a brick.

edit: what's wrong with the disgust smiley?</end quote></div>

interesting stereotype...

A lot of my friends were involved in sports that work in IT now...and were rather good and played sports in college, some were only D3, but sports players none the less.

That stereotype of geeks getting beat up in school is over...in my opinion.

but yeah, what the hell, CTRL N? haha

FF's CTRL-T FTW!

 

[Ramma2]

Every business has sucky users, but not every business has a sucky IT department.

 

[Mr Pickles]

Originally posted by: Canai
Oh, and every time I go into the IT office, they are all standing around the front desk eating candy. I'm dead serious. Every single time I've gone in there they are all clustered at the front of the office eating from a bowl of candy they keep on the front desk..

And they give me really weird looks when I eat their candy too.

Don't touch their F*ckin candy!

Also, I'd like to congratulate the OP for having the audacity to post an IT bashing thread in a forum populated mostly by members with IT Related job. PM me when you head to the UF stadium with an Ohio State hat on.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
You hear it all the time, the PEBKAC, user's errors, ID-10T form for computer users, etc... Well, now here's your chance to fight back. Tell us your stories of incompetencies from your IT department in general.

1. I have no idea what they're doing, but they have to do maintenance EVERYDAY for at least a few hours, and usually end up with outages after the maintenance.
2. Somehow, they allow the exchange server to run out of storage space, resulting in chaos usually.
3. Our VOIP phone system works, sometimes.
4. Hard drive on the exchange server failed, email is down for hours. I don't really know how long it takes them to swap a drive, initialize, check stats...
5. Badge access is iffy, sometimes we have to use another door because the front door just "lost its access control list".
6. They schedule enterprise virus scan during mid day.

1. No idea
2. Bad management, backups are probably failing.
3. VOIP isnt always an IT related duty
4. RAID rebuilding can take a long time. Plus they may have to pull backup logs.
5. This is a facilities issue, not IT.
6. Not a bad idea considering most people take a lunch at ~noon and the computers are on. Doesnt make sense to schedule an AV scan when there is a high possibility of the computers being turned off.

 

[manowar821]

we have crappy p4 Dell systems with 256 meg of ram each, running XP. They have dual 22 inch WS LCD monitors.

 

[funkymatt]

the company i used to work for had a incompetent IT guy. he had good intentions but managed to fry 2 kvms and release a virus on the network that infected all of our offline documentation. he had plumber butt and had to be told to buy longer shirts.

i did learn some pretty cool things from him though.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: paulxcook
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: GDaddy
I work in IT in a big company, they working on a project to centralize everything at corporate, I see the goal they are heading to, but corporate wont say the end result. With this project the better i do on it, the faster i work myself out of a job. I understand the reasoning behind it, and it's not incompetence, but it still irks me. The better i do the sooner i will have to look for a new job.</end quote></div>

Do they think you don't know this project pushes you out of your own job, or do they not care?

Sounds like you need to ignore the project and spend some paid time on CareerBuilder.

screw careerbuilder, use Dice.com

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Joemonkey
would you rather they schedule it for midnight, then when people have their PCs off it kicks off at first boot the next day since it was not done at midnight the night before? I don't know about you, but i'd rather have my PC slow down about lunch time, go to lunch, come back, and it be about done than have 2 almost unworkable hours at the beginning of the day. 2 hours though, is incompetence again.</end quote></div>

Your users turn their PCs off every day?

I've scripted system maintenance here, including WoL to power on unresponsive systems. Also, if you have a very large RAID array, it could very well take 4 hours to swap out drives and rebuild, then boot back into Live. As for shutting down a PC to swap PS/2 devices, while it isn't a bad idea since power runs to these ports continuously, it is by no means required any more (won't fry the mobo)

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage

interesting stereotype...

A lot of my friends were involved in sports that work in IT now...and were rather good and played sports in college, some were only D3, but sports players none the less.

That stereotype of geeks getting beat up in school is over...in my opinion.

but yeah, what the hell, CTRL N? haha

Yea, bit it's still what I picture in my mind when I try to comprehend the braindead policies the head of IT comes up with.

CTRL-N, looking at the calander, using right click, those are all tools I need to do my job. I can't even put something in my quiklaunch! I used to have 12 icons on my quiklaunch, and it allowed me to have all my systems up and running in a couple minutes, now I have to go through a 4-layer menu off the Start menu and manually bring up each system I need.

Plus, using CTRL-N and the address bar (which is gone now too, btw. Arbitrarily!) i used to be able to bypass the "VZWeb" website, which always took up about /14 of the workspace with it's useless tabs. It wouldn't be such a problem on the new monitors, but they're too incompetent to set the native resolution correctly on these LCDs.


Edit: At least we don't have the batch file that used to run at startup and set the clock to a server in another time zone's local time......

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: MrLee
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Canai
Oh, and every time I go into the IT office, they are all standing around the front desk eating candy. I'm dead serious. Every single time I've gone in there they are all clustered at the front of the office eating from a bowl of candy they keep on the front desk..

And they give me really weird looks when I eat their candy too.</end quote></div>

Don't touch their F*ckin candy!

Also, I'd like to congratulate the OP for having the audacity to post an IT bashing thread in a forum populated mostly by members with IT Related job. PM me when you head to the UF stadium with an Ohio State hat on.

Right, do the IT guys come to your desk and take your candy?

I eat peoples candy, but only if it's offered to me.

< IT guy

 

[NuroMancer]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
You hear it all the time, the PEBKAC, user's errors, ID-10T form for computer users, etc... Well, now here's your chance to fight back. Tell us your stories of incompetencies from your IT department in general.

1. I have no idea what they're doing, but they have to do maintenance EVERYDAY for at least a few hours, and usually end up with outages after the maintenance.
2. Somehow, they allow the exchange server to run out of storage space, resulting in chaos usually.
3. Our VOIP phone system works, sometimes.
4. Hard drive on the exchange server failed, email is down for hours. I don't really know how long it takes them to swap a drive, initialize, check stats...
5. Badge access is iffy, sometimes we have to use another door because the front door just "lost its access control list".
6. They schedule enterprise virus scan during mid day.

1. Maintenance everyday does seems extream, but it is often the case that people run over maintance windows if the business tells them they can only have 4 hours, but the process needs 5.....

2. This one is a wierd one, perhaps they don't have quotas set properly for some users.

3. Avaya is CRAP unless setup correctly right from the start.

4 As said, rebuilding a large array can take a hours. Especially is there is something wrong with the controller.

5. Badge access isn't it, its security.

6. This one is a bit wierd for me, we run a WoL script to wake computers up nice and early and run their scan.

 

[Steve]

My first job had such an unorganized, unthinking IT department, I don't even know where to begin. Especially since I've been trying to forget it all. Anyway I was browsing through Craigslist last week or so and came upon an ad posted by that dept's manager, saying he'd like fifty 19" LCDs for around $150 apiece, (obviously for the upcoming biannual convention here in town). I forwarded that to a friend of mine who has interned in that department, here was his reply:

Man...

I am working there again, and there's so much about this post that doesn't make any sense.

Then he mentioned this, although it's really more of a user error, but the department should be kind enough to give some warning to these users, especially since this is a non-profit org (I've found corporate users to be a bit more on the ball, computer-wise):

We have been ridiculously busy, though. We just rolled out new desktops and LCDs to every desktop user in the building, of course without testing it, and people are furious about their missing email archives or word documents or whatever the hell they decided didn't need to go on a network drive.

 

[NuroMancer]

Originally posted by: manowar821
we have crappy p4 Dell systems with 256 meg of ram each, running XP. They have dual 22 inch WS LCD monitors.

And? Departments have budgets, the IT manager spent some of his to upgrade his powerusers computers. Go ask your manager for a better computer.