Why everyone hates the IT department
pcpro.co.uk
Why everyone hates the IT department
1–10 of 88 posts
Re: Why everyone hates the IT department
#2I hate to reinforce stereotypes. But in every Agency I've worked in, most of the IT staff have been under-skilled computer enthusiasts with inflated self worth. This in my opinion is what creates a schism. Many IT staff sell themselves as being much more knowledgeable than they actually are. So when presented with a problem that goes over their head they tend to get defensive and shitty.
I've found the nicer the IT staff, the more knowledgeable they tend to be.
You can test my theory for yourself. If you have a cranky IT staff member, ask him/her to help you with a problem you know they can fix. Note their tone. Then ask them to help you with a problem that goes beyond their skill level. Note their tone.
Re: Why everyone hates the IT department
#3I feel like ranting - maybe this will generate a good discussion.
Most of my experiences with IT have been fine. I worked at a Texas state agency once, though, that caused me to dream about throwing IT workers out my office window.
For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files just fine. Also, for an agency focused on security their insistence on using Windows XP was baffling.
Secondly, I was told I could only use a certain browser because of another incoherent argument relying on "security." Interestingly, nothing was done to keep me from putting a pocket version of Firefox on a flash drive and connect to my own secure proxy. This is because the IT guys had no idea such wizardry was even possible.
Thirdly, for some reason print jobs were routed out of the office to a data center in San Angelo and then routed back to the printer down the hall. Printing a single page was non-deterministic and painful, never mind my final reports. This was a result of some state mandate about consolidating IT.
And then there was the time I tried to install Notepad++ to do some minor dev work (they hired a CS undergrad to do financial work so I thought I'd do more than estimate results). 2 weeks later I was approved to use a similar text editor on the grounds that I already have a task bar to manage multiple documents - a tab bar is completely unnecessary and Notepad++ requires further scrutiny. 3 weeks later I had a Perl interpreter.
At my current job they forced me to let them change the root password on my issued machine to something they knew and I didn't. I get why you do this: because you cannot fully trust people and I dealt with sensitive data; fine. Afterward I re-installed my OS and set my root password back. I don't understand why they don't think these things through.
Re: Why everyone hates the IT department
#4I feel like ranting - maybe this will generate a good discussion. Most of my experiences with IT have been fine. I worked at a Texas state agency once, though, that caused me to dream about throwing IT workers out my office window. For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files jus…
1. Equipment deployed and supported by the organization most likely has additional applications for encryption, can be managed remotely and updated on a regular basis. It is far more secure, and costs less to the organization as a whole.
2. I doubt it was for security. Most likely they don't have the resources to support multiple browsers/versions for business applications and settled on a single one. It sounds like the "failure" to block USB devices is more for user convenience. Blocking USB devices, while much more secure, is extremely difficult to justify nowadays.
3. Sounds like a State issue, not an IT issue. It is probably as much of a pain in the ass to them as it is to you.
4. Such a minor issue probably sat in a queue as other higher priority items were being dealt with. Approving a text-editor for a single user does not usually end-up on the plate of the CIO for consideration.
I'm not trying to defend all IT policies and practices. Some of them are less justifiable then others, and some are outright stupid, but a mantra I repeat over and over is that:
"Given unlimited time and budget, anything is possible. Anything else is compromise."
You are a "super-user". Recognize that you are not the majority in a large organization and limited resources are, by necessity, focused on the largest impact. Often, these priorities are not even determined by the IT organization and staff and left in the hands of committees, meetings and third-party vendors/consultants.
It is not ideal. It is a pain in the ass. There is a lot of room for improvement.
On both sides.
Re: Why everyone hates the IT department
#5There are three big problems with IT departments (IMHO):
1. Anyone who is sufficiently skilled to be good at his or her job in the IT department is almost certainly overqualified so the system self-selects out good people; and
2. Like any other support role people only tend to notice you when things go wrong; and
3. My general experience with DBAs, sysadmins, techs and the like is that they generally resent you for asking them to do things, making the entire experience unpleasant. I'm not sure if such people are attracted to such positions or such positions end up making such people but whatever the case, "surly" is a commonly appropriate adjective to use. The cliche of the bearded UNIX purist exists for a reason.
At Google, I've generally been very impressed with our support people, both the field techs and the SREs. I would hesitate at calling Google's recipe a success for running IT because it may simply be that we're picking the cream of the crop, which obviously not everyone can do.
It is worth noting that field techs do have a career path in operations (possibly management) as well as being an ex tech (a field tech assigned to a particular executive). If Alan Eustace's computer stops working his ex tech basically needs to drop everything and get it fixed. Such people not only need to be technically good but they need to exert their (considerable) influence. It's amazing how quickly things can change when it's "for Larry" or "for Alan", etc.
Re: Why everyone hates the IT department
#6They use upgrading to IE9 as an example. However, many companies are still running IE6 and IE7. Windows XP was replaced in 2006 and it's still pervasive on corporate desktops. 16GB of RAM is $100 and it's useless in the average corporate desktop.
Sorry, but I think corporate IT departments just try to grow large and be as risk averse as possible.
Re: Why everyone hates the IT department
#7I hate to reinforce stereotypes. But in every Agency I've worked in, most of the IT staff have been under-skilled computer enthusiasts with inflated self worth. This in my opinion is what creates a schism. Many IT staff sell themselves as being much more knowledgeable than they actually are. So when presented with a problem that goes over their head they tend to get defensive and shitty. I've found the nicer the IT s…
I think what you will usually see as you work your way through the different layers of IT, is that IT workers on the lower rungs, especially help desk, have to deal with all of the irritating IT requests. The guys towards the top usually don't have to deal with end users, because whatever comes to them is filtered on the lower levels. I'm not saying that there aren't incompetent IT workers, just that you should realize that a lot of IT requests are mind-numbingly stupid.
Re: Why everyone hates the IT department
#8An idea I once had to improve morale within the R&D group was to have some sort of semi-regular contest within the group where the winner would get to fire one IT guy of their choice.
Re: Why everyone hates the IT department
#9Well, no organization should complain too loud if it is not valueing the IT department as much as it does its profit centers. The situation in the most companies is that IT is trimmed as cheap as possible, so what do people expect to happen??
Also, for some reason, IT departments seem to get or develop goals that are not aligned with the business. In my current place, IT is actually actively working to make the life of R&D departments harder. It's not even the question how to create a secure environment in which people can still do more than Office and Email.
Re: Why everyone hates the IT department
#10Moral of the story (and very applicable to individual HN members): don't be a cost center.