IT Rant 2016

[dave_the_nerd]

If "that guy" is the reason I can't use excel to its full extent, then "that guy" will have to live without my data

Unfortunately, there's a good chance "that guy" is your boss.

 

[DigDog]

If "that guy" is the reason I can't use excel to its full extent, then "that guy" will have to live without my data

"that girl".

it seems women get promoted just because they are female. more concerned with who decided she would make a good supervisor in that particular team.

and yes, i *do* have to hide cells because we get a spreadsheet with 40+ columns, of which i need 4.

she thought that hide meant you were deleting the data; once we explained that you can unhide, she thought the spacing would be off because the columns do not line up properly.

when we tried explaining that, she went all angry and confused and pulled the "do it this way because i'm your boss" card.

so i color-code and hide, then remove the colors and unhide, and send it to her.

 

[glenn1]

If "that guy" is the reason I can't use excel to its full extent, then "that guy" will have to live without my data

We ought to have a clearance sale on all the IT folks that don't seem to realize they work for the business not the other way around and fitness for purpose is whatever the customer/user says it is.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

We ought to have a clearance sale on all the IT folks that don't seem to realize they work for the business not the other way around and fitness for purpose is whatever the customer/user says it is.

Flipside of that is; if you pay us to advise you and ignore our advice, stop blaming us for the consequences.

There's a reason so much IT infrastructure looks like something from Thereifixedit, and 9 times out of 10, it's not because of incompetent IT staff.

 

[vi edit]

We ought to have a clearance sale on all the IT folks that don't seem to realize they work for the business not the other way around and fitness for purpose is whatever the customer/user says it is.

That mentality is exactly what gets companies into trouble. Everyone thinks they are more special than someone else and goes up and complains to the CIO which then in turn initiates a chain of emails and "DO IT NOW" commands which results in you having to drop what you are doing to put out the new *MORE IMPORTANT FIRE* which then incites your current customer who in turns sends out an email their stuff is now not getting done.

And it just ends up in giant circle jerk of "IT DOESN'T DO ANYTHING!!!!" because any and all intake and demand management process was circumvented and zero FTE resources were allocated for all of the work that wasn't previously requested.

You are right. We are just a resource. But a finite one and one that is always reacting to a request that thinks it's more important than the one before it.

 

[Schfifty Five]

Someone walked into my office and ask

"Is there a way to let people know i'm out of the office next week?"

We been using outlook since early 2000, maybe even before that.. during xp days. The guy has been working here for over 16 years and using outlook for at least 16 years.

Yes its call outlook out of office message. ITS 2016 !@#!@#@!##!@@#@!#!@#@!#!@#!@#!@#!@#!@

Are you called "Nick, the IT guy" around the office?

 

[gorcorps]

Unfortunately, there's a good chance "that guy" is your boss.

Luckily I haven't run into that issue yet. There's also a difference between formatting a spreadsheet to make it more useable vs. formatting it a specific way because the boss doesn't get it.

Most of the special formatting I do is specifically to make it easier to follow for others that aren't as good with excel, or didn't make the spreadsheet themselves. Martha in accounting doesn't need to know what the VB code I put in is doing when she clicks the button, all she needs to know is that when she clicks it the graphs update and she has what she needs.

 

[Darwin333]

Unfortunately, there's a good chance "that guy" is your boss.

Ugh, tell me about it. When I first got onto construction estimating my boss still didn't know how to operate the caps lock key when sending emails and wanted all estimates done on those green paper "take off" pads. Guess what, there are a ton of line item costs when doing a take off and a single estimate could easily span 7 or 8 legal sized sheets. To make matters even worse when you bring your estimate to him to review he often changes a few of your numbers, if you were smart you wrote the totals of each column on the bottom of the page and only had to re-add that one page, then total it, then re-multiply your labor burden percentage, then re-add your mats, tax, labor and burden then re-multiply your overhead, re-multiply your profit and finally add all of those things up.

I thought holy shit am I going to be the savior here and show these guys a thing or two. I made a very simple excel sheet that looked exactly like the paper take offs except it did all of the math for you. When you changed a number it automatically recalculated everything else and gave you your final number. Boss was pissed didn't like it because he didn't trust excel "those computers doing the bid". I was new so back to the freaking long way I went.

Once I was more established and the boss started getting to the level of being able to use google maps I finally started doing it purely in excel and didn't catch any grief. Everyone else in the office, 6 other estimators, still do it his way though despite me offering to share my spreadsheet.