It is NOT your network.

[AndrewR]

You may maintain it and work in the IT department, but it is the company's property, not yours. The computer you work at, and the one that I use are also the company's and not yours. Even if you are a big turd in the IT department, that does not mean it is your equipment unless you shelled out your fat salary and bonus to buy it.

Simply because you are paid to play with the network and maintain it, don't cop an attitude when asked to look at something that is wrong and has nothing to do with what a user has done. Sure, if a user screws up, you have the right to become angry because it has caused you some work and NOT because it's "your machine" or "your network".

Keep in mind that you are in a SUPPORT role. Your job is not the primary goal of the company but is merely to facilitate the actual work that the company or corporation does. Therefore, you HELP THE USERS DO THEIR JOBS and are not the core business of the company. Keep in mind that you are therefore a SERVICE PROVIDER and climb down from your ivory tower of technical superiority and realize that your job does not make money for the company -- it enables the company to make money through the use of equipment.

---------------------
I couldn't resist. You do know the criticism can go both ways, don't you? While I'm sympathetic to some of the travails of the IT staff, I am also well aware of their foibles since I see them nearly every day.

 

[ApacheXMD]

Nick Burns, your company computer guy!

MOVE!!

-patchy

 

[warcleric]

AndrewR: hehe, you work where I work and see if its not my Network, You will be on a 386 with a 40MB HD acting as a dumb terminal over a 9600 baud dialup. I am god dammit, and you will respect me...but seriously, although i have not purchased it, I am ultimately responsible for every IT related piece of equipment...so in essence it is mine.

 

[Cable God]

exactly chris. When a user d/l's files and it formats their drive losing important data, that person is getting paid to sit on their arse to do nothing but complain how it's your fault that you didn't give them a better PC. Sure it is our fault also when a user downloads /installs something that gives someone else admin access to their pc.......

In essence......... IT IS OUR NETWORK

 

[Windogg]

Yep it's a team effort. I do may job so you can do your job. You do your job so I can do my job. Think about it this way, I betcha the same salespeople would go ballistic if started quoting prices and meeting with customers. I am responsible for the proper maintaince and availability of everything technology. I don't set the policies, the CFO does.

Windogg

 

[AndrewR]

<< Yep it's a team effort. I do may job so you can do your job. You do your job so I can do my job. >>


Actually, you should have stopped after the first two sentences. Your job is little different from telephone services, albeit on a larger and more complicated scale (and for the fact that people who work in telephone services in my company are complete idiots). I don't do my job so IT can do theirs -- they maintain the network which facilitates the the business of the company. PERIOD.

Arguably, what I do in the Litigation department only supports the true revenue generation sections of the company though I could point to the fact that my specific role, collection, brings in money for the company. IT's relation to revenue generation, at least as it pertains to desktop and network support, is definitely only tangentially related to revenue generation. In my company, IT has a stronger presence for revenue creation since they maintain the reservations system which does, in fact, generate revenue. However, I think we're mainly talking about &quot;classic&quot; IT in terms of network and desktop support.

You see, you might be responsible for the network, but it's not yours. No way around that. Simply because one attorney is responsible for the trademarks of the company does not render those trademarks &quot;his&quot;. What is the ultimate goal of the company? To have a smoothly running computer network? Not even close.

I obviously am in full agreement that users who screw up their computers are at fault. However, let me bring this scenario. Our IT department has our computers locked down so tightly that we can't even adjust the properties for the taskbar (ie, to make it &quot;auto-hide&quot. Therefore, if I need to adjust a printer (often because the network is having trouble) or change a screen size (because Windows decided my laptop needed 640x480 on its native 1024x768 screen), I have to put a call into someone to call a local tech (our initial tech support is in Ohio, from Atlanta) to come to my cube to adjust the screen. Now, how fscking stupid is that? So, not only is their productivity loss from my inability to use my system (or limited ability to use my system), there is also the wasted expensive time (since IT cross-charges its &quot;services&quot of the technician's visit, which takes all of ten seconds after the requisite two hour wait.

Nice system.

 

[Netopia]

I'm the Director of IT for my company. THEY ARE MY COMPUTERS! IT IS MY NETWORK! That's the way I see it and more importantly, that's the way the President and CEO of the company see it... and it's better that way... I treat them as if they were my personal property, being used to achieve a goal I'm interested in... generating income, part of which becomes my salary.

I also happen to believe in helping and educating users. The more they know, the less I'm needed for mundane tasks and the quicker they can get back to work making money for the company. What I don't believe in is being all nicey-nice to people who have been told NOT to put sodas or coffee near their computer and then proceed to ruin their keyboard... or people who say their computer is acting flakey and they are too stupid to reboot have been told A BAZILLION TIMES to shut it down, power it off and reboot it before they call anyone... or people who call complaining the &quot;the network is down&quot; when it is just that their favorite travel or leisure sight is not available. Yeah... it's my network and my computers... by the way, where're you posting from, who's machine are you on and are you on the clock?

It's a two way street.

Joe

 

[AndrewR]

Hey, Joe, no arguments from me on the stupid user part. Hell, I see enough people with no understanding of computers in my small section of 14 people since I'm usually called to do minor fixes (if I can) before anyone calls the support line. I'm rather amazed at what some people can accomplish, or can't as the case may be.

However, maybe it's peculiar to my company's system, but we have NO ABILITY to do any simple tasks (other than rebooting) so we MUST wait for people to saunter over to us to fix simple problems. That's NOT effective and wastes time. I have had multiple techs show up to my computer who knew significantly less than I do about maintaining a desktop (back in pre-Win95 days, I had a DOS problem with my system, told the tech EXACTLY what I had to done to try to fix it, so she proceeds to do the EXACT same things -- brilliant). The irony is that the same person referenced in the parenthetical was subsequently promoted to a rather high pay scale job. You have to love that.

However, that's fine if your CEO and President think it's your network, but you are on a completely different level from the tech drone who does the grunt work. Nevertheless, there are SIGNIFICANT problems with having an IT department which regards itself as THE means to an end -- trust me, I see it every day. Our IT department is horribly arrogant and completely inept at the same time. Our networked printers are down practically weekly, and our email server is so friggin' slow it takes 10 seconds to open an email. I won't even mention the fact that we are using Win95 in 2001.

Sure, the old OS and the locked down computer systems make less work and an easier life for the IT people, but it limits the rest of the company. Why? Our scanner choices are limited right now to SCSI, which is not installed on the standard desktop and impossible to install on the laptops, or parallel, which is painfully slow. What does that mean? Our use of the technology tools that SHOULD be available are not, and we are woefully behind comparable legal departments elsewhere. That limitation is the direct result of our IT department's arrogance and entrenchment WHICH IS IMPACTING THE COMPANY'S OPERATION, at least as I see it. Plus, we've just learned that the upgrade to our database will not work with Win95, which prevents us from installing a new module that is highly effective -- making their life easier makes our job more difficult.

We entertained the idea of upgrading our systems from 64MB to 128MB, which as anyone knows who works with Win9x is a very nice upgrade for memory management. Since we also use a legal database heavily (which is a memory hog), it would have been an excellent upgrade for us to relieve some of the problems a lot of people were experiencing. We brought this to IT's attention, and they resisted the upgrade, trying to get &quot;details&quot; of the slowness. The little techie goes to my computer and proceeds to defrag the hard drive (which had a whopping 1% fragmentation) then removes a couple items from the Startup group and declares that my computer will run faster. Since their delays pushed us against a budgetary wall, we dropped the upgrade. Way to go IT.

So, IT people are gods? Fsck that. They work in the same company and should work for the same goals, which does not mean self-fulfillment. Does anyone in IT disagree with that?

 

[iamwiz82]

Andrew, you do not understand. We use NT 4 SP 5 at my work, and i can think of 7 times in the last 2 weeks where people have changed desktop refresh rate and resolution to the point where it doesnt even work, and they get a blank monitor. I have to go over there and fix their stupid, idiotic mistakes.

Ahhh... our job would be much easier without those users.

 

[Netopia]

<< Our IT department is horribly arrogant and completely inept at the same time. >>



It's not your IT department that is the problem, it's the executive branch. The people you describe above would be former employees were they under my leadership... and that, I would say is the problem with your upper management; no leadership.



<< ...but you are on a completely different level from the tech drone who does the grunt work... >>



No I'm not. My version of leadership (via military background) is doing it first and knowing how to do the job of the person below you and above you. It is NOT a rare occurance for me to show up to fix an accounting clerk's stuck email or a Customer Service Rep's screwed bad network cable. But may the Good Lord be with the person who ever balks at any task I give, because if they are my employees, they know that I've done it, and do it and they they'd better fall in line.

I'm sorry for your woes. Not teaching end users to help themselves is CORPORATE stupidity, not just IT. Generally, if I find people like yourself in the organization, I try to teach them EVERTHING I can as opportunity permits... and then make sure that both THEIR boss and MINE knows of their effort and cooperation. Don't know if it does any good, but if they are putting forth extra effort, I feel it's my duty to them to make sure it is acknowledged at some level.

Best of luck, I hope things improve.

Joe

 

[Windogg]

Andrew, you might disagree with my methods but youc annot argue the results. Sure a few bad apples still tick me off but 95% of the office is more than happy. When I was hired to revamp the entire IT structure in the office I am in, everything was in disarray.

All work was done piecemeal.
No two systems we identical.
Faith and confidence in IT was non-existant.
Morale at the help desk was very low.
Server crashes daily

Not to toot my own horn but here are a few of my accomplishments. Other sites are hoping to adapt what we have done to revamp their IT departments. We rate near the top in server uptimes(99% plus in the last 6 months) and speed of resolution (85% over the phone or technician within 5 minutes). All obsolete equipment has been retired and supposidly &quot;outdated&quot; equipment was resurected and put back into service saving over $50,000 in the last year. All systems were cataloged and reimaged with a standard suite of software. A preventative maintaince program was put into place so that IT was proactive as opposed to reactive.

Yea things sucked for 2 months but no one had ever taken the initiative. In fact many people from outside offices including corporate HQ schedule trips to the office that have their systems brought up to standard. Outside visitors and &quot;troublemakers&quot; often account for 75% of calls.

Many people initially hated the hardline apporach but soon realized that they are now more productive. I guess my boss is thankful since all those bonus check added up to a nice new car.

Hell yea it's my equipment since my budget pays for it.