How you know your IT Dept. sucks...

[OCBucksFan]

In keeping with the IT stereotype, you've decided to put everything in terms of how stupid the people you have to deal with are. And how it's you against the world.
Congrats on your job success, but if you're really so succesful and don't have any of the problems enumerated w/IT departments -- why is it so personal to you?

Well not to say every user I deal with is an idiot, that would be completely unfair. To be honest, 75% of my users are easy going, have figured out the basics of what they need to do and are generally cool. Just like any job, however, it's not fun to talk about the good things.

How interesting is it to say "oh, I had a user figure out how to use their task manager correctly today, now he's pretty much on his own."

I actually love my job, I do well and most of the department is really cool. More than users, the people who truly piss me off are vendors who come in, install something then leave without telling me shit :)

My response came off more "personal" than intended, talking about work during a time frame where I am trying to get time patches for everything we have is more than a little annoying.

 

[23Skidoo]

Well not to say every user I deal with is an idiot, that would be completely unfair. To be honest, 75% of my users are easy going, have figured out the basics of what they need to do and are generally cool. Just like any job, however, it's not fun to talk about the good things.

How interesting is it to say "oh, I had a user figure out how to use their task manager correctly today, now he's pretty much on his own."

I actually love my job, I do well and most of the department is really cool. More than users, the people who truly piss me off are vendors who come in, install something then leave without telling me shit :)

My response came off more "personal" than intended, talking about work during a time frame where I am trying to get time patches for everything we have is more than a little annoying.

Fair enough. I had to clear a device through the network yesterday and IT was very helpful -- especially once they found out I had the MAC address ready for them. So I'm inclined to think that maybe my experience is limited to a company with poor customer service and military civilians.
And it is a lot of fun to talk about the not-so-tech savvy people, like air traffic controllers. I still talk to old buddies about the time they used pens on the TSA, or when they asked me to "tweak the beacon" -- I got chewed out for that one and still couldn't stop laughing. The ATC Boss was so pissed he called the Radar Chief (his equal in rank and my boss) who put a show of chewing me out and then we laughed about it later.
From then on, every time they asked me (or anyone else) to "tweak the beacon" the standard operating procedure was to hold our laughter until we got inside the Radar, lock the doors, shut down the beacon, lay on the floor for 10-15 minutes, and then turn it all back up and transfer control back to the controllers over the phone. Everytime, without fail, they'd say the beacon video looked better. This entire problem was related to the fact that they'd "lose track" on aircraft in a certain mountainous region... and they refused to believe that RF gets scattered by things like... oh... mountains.

 

[gregorylee]

My problem is that Management doesn't ever talk to IT before they buy shit, "Make it work!".... OK but remember those security guidelines you sent out a few years back? Not to mention that there is no set in stone standard for programmers to follow as to what settings for IE, Java, whatever that they need to stay within. Nothing at all like telling a user.... "when you are using application A, set this checkbox like this, but when you need to go into application B, change it to this." Then have some outside "consulting" come in and fucking make a bunch of "suggestions" without any care or knowledge of how this will affect the user community, and their ability to do their job.

 

[OCBucksFan]

My problem is that Management doesn't ever talk to IT before they buy shit, "Make it work!".... OK but remember those security guidelines you sent out a few years back? Not to mention that there is no set in stone standard for programmers to follow as to what settings for IE, Java, whatever that they need to stay within. Nothing at all like telling a user.... "when you are using application A, set this checkbox like this, but when you need to go into application B, change it to this." Then have some outside "consulting" come in and fucking make a bunch of "suggestions" without any care or knowledge of how this will affect the user community, and their ability to do their job.

Heh, we have a situation here where the bosses have decided they like IE 7.0, and the IT department doesn't really care for it as it pretty much requires us to teach the users how to use Internet explorer all over again. That SOUNDS silly but understand a lot of my users are older mortgage bankers who don't even understand what the computer is doing. So the questions we have been getting from our test group have been pretty common.

1) Where did those words across the top go? (This refers to the menu option and relocation)

2) Why did you delete my favorites? (Since it's now a menu on the side)

Now, the owners want to discuss the upgrade path to Vista. If I am getting questions like the above ones on a simple IE update I dread the thought of changing their who operating system :(

 

[CleveBucks]

Just wait til they push Office 2007 on you. You'll be running for the hills....

 

[OCBucksFan]

Just wait til they push Office 2007 on you. You'll be running for the hills....

Heh, it's funny you mention that, we recently purchased a batch of office 2003 licenses and they sent me the 2007 disc, it's sitting in my drawer because I don't wanna deal with a network wide office upgrade :)