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Makes them more relatable to you, fakes a relationship in your mind so you're less likely to tell them to get hosed.
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Aug 17, 2018 18:22
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Lol. We have a standing lunch every other week Friday lunch with our VAR rep, so yeah we have an interest in a good relationship.
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Aug 17, 2018 18:29
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:Makes them more relatable to you, fakes a relationship in your mind so you're less likely to tell them to get hosed. Depending on what it's for I tell them to skip to the product. If it's a big ticket item, it might be worth my time. But if I go to you shopping for an exact product I'm buying that I just want pricing and I'll tell you to skip the life story. I've told people that keep bringing it up that I will walk out and no one has ever called me on it. It's not something I'd love to do, but gently caress sitting around for hours over something in the 20-50k range.
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Aug 17, 2018 19:15
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poo poo not pissing me off: I built me a new desk to go in my new office in my new house. Goddamn. I actually took the time to prep it right and holy poo poo what a difference it makes. I basically took my old door desks, salvaged the legs off of them and built an L-desk with two ikea Gerton tabletops. But the secret is that I bought a new random orbit sander and worked it over using progressively fine grit paper. Then three coats of water-based polyurethane finish, sanding between each coat, and drat if this isn’t a fine looking finish that’s durable (ask me how I know this), condensation-ring proof, smooth to write on and easy on the eyes. Took me a long afternoon (mostly in drying time) and it’s now my new favorite thing. Well, at least until my new amp arrives.
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Aug 17, 2018 20:52
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Agrikk posted:poo poo not pissing me off: Needs pictures. Of the process if you documented it, but at least of the finished product. I've always wanted to do that with a desk so I can make it to my exact specs but 1. I'm not a handy guy with that stuff 2. I'm very lazy and 3. I rent and have never really had a place to do work like this. I ended up with a very nice Sauder corner desk though. It's sturdy enough for my monitor stand, legs and feet, and multiple cats jumping on and off without any concerns of breakage.
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Aug 17, 2018 21:09
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I’ll take pics of the finished product but the sanding of each desktop you can do on a cardboard box in a front porch or driveway. Super easy to do. I grabbed the technique from a video on YouTube that I’ll hunt down and post when I post pics.
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Aug 18, 2018 00:33
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Agrikk posted:I’ll take pics of the finished product but the sanding of each desktop you can do on a cardboard box in a front porch or driveway. My 'front porch' has three other doors within 3 or 4 yards 
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Aug 18, 2018 16:41
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Thanatosian posted:Why do sales people feel the need to give their life story before their pitch? To try and convince you they are human.
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Aug 19, 2018 04:58
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Bob Morales posted:It's even worse when they email the guy back telling him I'm the one to contact. Same with phone calls. Lemme transfer you to Bob! If I do get trapped into talking to a vendor and they ask me who does x at my company I tell them it is my personal policy to not name names.
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Aug 19, 2018 05:16
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I just tell em that snitches get stitches.
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Aug 19, 2018 05:25
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Hi guys, long time lurker first time poster. Work is frustrating lately and I want to vent. Our corporate family has 1500-2000 people in branch offices in 10 countries. When I started our IT department was kind of mixed as far as roles go with all 5-10 people doing all support and administrative work as available time, language ability, and skills allow. Paperwork, kitchen duty, and replacing supplies in the bathrooms are also part of the job. I've been doing mainly support for over a year. From the start the companies have been growing quickly, but our department hasn't. At one point our team split up into three groups: T1 supporters, system/network administrators or T2, and license/telecom people. Each of these groups has 3 people max. Being literally half of the first level support for a couple months of this was kind of unreasonable. We have a ticketing system but also must answer phone calls, letting normal users jump ahead of the entire queue. At about this point, we also got a security officer. They are on par with the worst examples I've seen in this thread and the tickets thread. About once a week they read about some vulnerability that our admins have to drop everything else to fix, which in turn makes something break for dozens or hundreds of people. Sometimes it's just 'reinstall the printer for 300 people'. Sometimes it's visit the offices and repatch every phone. I don't mind the lower pressure jobs but there is way too much to do. We slowly hired a few more IT supporters recently One person is has trouble learning new things. They have been with us for half a year and what seems like every other ticket they open they have to ask for information on how to proceed. We tell them to leave a note and put the ticket back in the queue or focus on tickets that they can solve, but they choose to continue going after hard tickets and interrupting the work of others by asking too many questions. We had an intern. Their parent works for HR and hey the kid loves that league of legend game so its our job to get him motivated to work. We also have to teach him everything, and he has trouble googling information on, for example, changing a keyboard language. After months of sleeping in the office and playing games on his phone - to the horror of people who walk into our office during visiting walk-in hours with their computer issues - they are no longer an intern. Now he is a full-time trainee. He is currently learning HTML by making tables in Microsoft Word and saving them as .html files. The other new supporters have trouble with the stress of the job, spend too much time with personal calls and internet use, and sometimes don't quite get to easy cases given to them in the same day/week sometimes. These people actually know how to plug in monitors and CAT6 at least which saves me a huge amount of time. I show them the ropes and how to solve cases as I can but it's difficult to find the time. The veteran supporters have more rights and permissions than they should. The new people don't have enough to do many basic stuff. Several times a day someone needs a folder on a network drive or needs their remote desktop session forcibly killed. The new guys just have to hope one of the two veterans are around or stick the ticket back in the queue. Recently, I was not able to finish a single ticket without interruption for a whole day. Half of our system/network administration team does not contribute meaningfully and are consistently sick once a week. There are no incentive or punishment systems at all. No carrot for those with amazing solutions and great service, no stick for those who do nothing all day. This is my first "real" IT job and I don't hate it. Friendly co workers, friendly boss that has our back, no overtime, just the workload is too much for us. My question to the thread - how normal is all of this? Is 7 people in one room handling all system/network/support what I should expect at every IT department supporting 2000 people in 3 different languages and time zones? Heran Bago fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Aug 19, 2018 |
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Aug 19, 2018 16:26
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Normal? Fairly. Good? No. My org as about 3500 people and about 12 people in the roles you’ve mentioned, plus a handful of interns at any given time (though they’re hired as proper employees and actually work). We’re busy but rarely feel as if we’re drowning. As usual it sounds like you’re facing a management problem. The worst type of problem. e: and Jesus no, we don’t stick bathroom supplies. Aunt Beth fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Aug 19, 2018 |
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Aug 19, 2018 17:07
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It sounds like you mostly have a management problem. What's your relationship like with your boss? If it doesn't suck, try sitting down with him for 30-60 minutes and air your grievances, without giving names unless he asks. It's possible that he's overworked enough himself that he hasn't noticed. If that doesn't work or he isn't the kind of boss you can do that with, polish up the resume and start looking for a new job. It sounds like things have gotten worse over time, and you work for a huge company that still has a small business mentality. If they do change and set up a proper IT department that may fix it, but the transition (which could last years) may be even worse. As always, YMMV, but it sounds like you've been there a while, use that experience to convince a decent company you'd be an asset. Lazy/bad co-workers are a thing everywhere, but most places have enough redundancy built in that it isn't super stressful, and it sounds like you've got a lot more going on than a low head count and absent management.
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Aug 19, 2018 17:25
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No.
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Aug 19, 2018 17:31
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Heran Bago posted:Paperwork, kitchen duty, and replacing supplies in the bathrooms are also part of the job. I've been doing mainly support for over a year. Don't do this. This is insanity. If somebody tells you, an IT support professional, to stock toilet paper, you tell them to gently caress off. quote:
The biggest problem is that good, experienced IT people won't join the dumpster fire your company is fueling. The only hires you can make are inexperienced people who don't understand that IT doing kitchen staff work is mind boggling insanity. The IT department will always sit on that bottom rung of quality because of this feedback loop: Company sets bullshit standards for IT Experienced people don't take the job Inexperienced people start working and learn on the job Inexperienced becomes experienced and leaves for a better job Company thinks all IT is ungrateful little shits with no loyalty, blames millennials for quality employees leaving as soon as they can Company cuts funding and support for IT staff because "they're just going to quit anyways" Go-to:start If you're at the point where you're feeling frustrated with the lack of quality, it's time for you to move on to a company that maybe at least pretends to give a poo poo about you.
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Aug 19, 2018 18:00
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Judge Schnoopy posted:Company sets bullshit standards for IT It's even more complete if they can work IT "only being a cost center", and "not actually making any money" into it.
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Aug 19, 2018 18:26
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...... No what?
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Aug 19, 2018 19:55
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I have been on teams much too understaffed for the job. It is not fun and I do not think I have ever seen bringing up the staffing level problem to management do anything but mark you as a troublemaker. You've been there for over a year, that's long enough to start applying elsewhere for better jobs without looking weird on a resume. I would suggest you do exactly that.
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Aug 19, 2018 20:44
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I agree with everyone who says your environment can't be fixed, at least not in a way that will make it worth you being there to witness it happen.
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Aug 19, 2018 20:46
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The head of IT talks a good game here with issues like that where he says he will sort things out. The main issue in our place is we work M-F 9-5 ish, the business calls the emergency call out facility for non-emergencies which is basically one of 8 people on a weekly on call rota. I think the solution to the problem is to rename the service as the out of hours IT service, also have IT accept that people will call for non-emergencies and just help them. Some of our team like to go "not an emergency, not dealing, wait for M-F 9-5" Head of IT keeps saying yeah we will agree with the business what must be done and what can wait - but across our sites everyone is slightly different so it's often a judgement call - hence the optimal solution is "just get on with it - you get paid a premium anyway" - then if that opens another can of worms, we resource it accordingly but I don't think it will in our environment. The main reason it's an issue for us is that our out of hours used to be a rota of the managers, so we accepted certain things needed doing and just got on with it - we added the more experienced front line staff to the rota as the managers don't want to be on call as much and the front line guys want the cash, but I've already had every single one of the new people text me and say "your site have rang about X and I'm not doing it as it's not essential" (or similar) Eevery time my response has been "ok if you can talk them out of it great - but if they call me direct, I'm sending them back to you as you are on call and I'm not - up to you if you want to pre-empt that..." Every time they've got the hint so luckily I don't need Head of IT to sort it for me so it's just mildly irritating being disturbed when someone is supposed to take care of it. Never the less - I like to square that sort of poo poo away early on otherwise it turns into something much more problematic.
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Aug 20, 2018 10:14
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angry armadillo posted:The head of IT talks a good game here with issues like that where he says he will sort things out. Put down in writing what is and isn't considered acceptable for out-of-hours calls and send it to everyone. It gives your guys something to point to on their own without texting you to cut down unnecessary calls, and gives you something to point them to when they try to dodge something actually in scope to keep them on-task.
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Aug 20, 2018 11:18
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It's me. I'm the guy explaining how replication works to an IT support dude at my girlfriends significantly larger company because he doesn't understand how it works. (I'm WFH in the same room as her) (office 365 poo poo, the guy is expecting changes to go through immediately, but they're using DirSync) dogstile fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Aug 20, 2018 |
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Aug 20, 2018 11:42
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Put down in writing what is and isn't considered acceptable for out-of-hours calls and send it to everyone. It gives your guys something to point to on their own without texting you to cut down unnecessary calls, and gives you something to point them to when they try to dodge something actually in scope to keep them on-task. So at our next quarterly meet up, head of IT always gets us all to do presentations, this time mine is going to be on the cheat sheet I've created to help people not familiar with my site deal with the top 3 OOH calls - under the guise of helping people deal with my site more quickly and efficiently - coincidently, number 1 OOH call is a call I've been told by techs "isn't urgent" but should that attitude persist, I'll be in a position to say "have you been through the sheet properly" That should tidy all the crap up.
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Aug 20, 2018 12:21
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Corsair Pool Boy posted:...... No what? Bob Morales posted:It's even worse when they email the guy back telling him I'm the one to contact. Same with phone calls. Lemme transfer you to Bob! 1. How did you get this number? - If you got my name off a list, take it off. - If someone at this company gave you my info, tell me their name right now. 2. Never call me again. The Macaroni fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Aug 20, 2018 |
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Aug 20, 2018 13:57
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Our customers service manager is a moron, and the world's worst manager (WWM).
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Aug 20, 2018 14:15
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Ugh. Looks like I need to  Got into work this morning at 6 like usual only to find an email from 5pm on Friday mandating that core business hours are now 10-4 for all exempt employees effective today? So many things wrong with this. No discussion, no heads up. While I'm looking for a new job, any suggestions on how to deal with this? They'll be adding 2-3 hours to my commute everyday. My dog would be left inside for 10+ hours a day now and I have commitments that would basically have to be abandoned because I wouldn't be home in time.
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Aug 20, 2018 15:44
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Core business hours for ... customer support? Looks like 6 - 2 would cover most of that including follow up and escalation. seems like maybe you’re all right?
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Aug 20, 2018 15:46
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Talk to your manager. If you're the only person available from 10-4, you're out of luck, but presumably there's additional coverage and you can demonstrate that someone will always be on duty during core business hours?
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Aug 20, 2018 15:49
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joe944 posted:Ugh. Looks like I need to What times are stated in your contract?
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Aug 20, 2018 15:52
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This is for exempt employees only for the spirit of collaboration apparently. It's a direct attack on a few of us that come in early to beat the traffic. I don't have a contract with stated hours but we historically just set our hours in the DB so people can look up our information if they want. This isn't about coverage. In fact, it would result in the opposite of that. Right now we have a decent spread over the day. They want us all here at the same time apparently. Most of the team are here during those hours, they just don't like us early birds. I'm the only person on the team that has worked at the company for more than a year. I've been here for 6 years, the next closest almost a year. So it's about them wanting physical access to me at all times. They pulled our ability to work remotely a few months back, although they still expect us to be on-call in addition to calling me when the place blows up after hours even if I'm not on-call. joe944 fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Aug 20, 2018 |
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Aug 20, 2018 16:04
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Depends on your comfort level for this sort of thing but with your seniority I would take this approach: don't. Don't do anything you don't want to do so long as you're providing value. If you're so goddamn indispensable that they can't send you a drat email or whatever then what are they going to do, fire you? in the meantime
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Aug 20, 2018 16:54
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Jaded Burnout posted:Depends on your comfort level for this sort of thing but with your seniority I would take this approach: don't. I'm definitely planning to call their bluff on this. One problem is they don't have much visibility into what I do since I spend most of my time writing puppet code. If it works, they have no idea. If it doesn't work then developers will make a big stink and we'll look bad. There's no positive. Middle management is useless.
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Aug 20, 2018 17:40
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I'd immediately talk to whoever you report to and bring it up. I would also continue doing what you're doing, but that's just me.
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Aug 20, 2018 17:41
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I would peace out entirely if I were you. If they wanna be that kinda lovely they're just going to find another way to be nasty to you later, even if you win on this.
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Aug 20, 2018 17:43
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Jaded Burnout posted:Depends on your comfort level for this sort of thing but with your seniority I would take this approach: don't. This. I was in a similar situation a few years back. I had been at the company for over 8 years and had an unofficially agreed early start to avoid heavy traffic and also to allow me to have a window to do some jobs before the bustle of the day started. My team were fine with it and even took advantage of it as they could pass things over for me to pick up in the morning. When a bunch of investment consultants came in the first thing they did was try to get everyone locked down to the same hours. Fortunately I was comfortable with the management and had a reputation for going above and beyond, so I simply ignored it. None of the day to day managers had an issue with it, but there was the inevitable showdown with them. Again, I was in a fortunate position where I could simply say "that does not work for me and I will be handing my notice if it is enforced". Other managers took my side too (as they understood the benefit of my early cover window), and a few others followed suit and refused to change their hours because they had similar circumstances. As Jaded Burnout says though, it all depends on your level of comfort with management and how much good mojo you've built up working the way you do.
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Aug 20, 2018 17:44
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buttchugging adderall posted:I would peace out entirely if I were you. If they wanna be that kinda lovely they're just going to find another way to be nasty to you later, even if you win on this. 100% agreed. Dog_Meat posted:As Jaded Burnout says though, it all depends on your level of comfort with management and how much good mojo you've built up working the way you do. Unfortunately I used to have this sort of reputation, but all of the management who liked me were fired and/or left. The current middle managers have no idea what they are doing and pass everything directly to us with zero filtering. They don't shield us from upper management and they don't sing our praises when we deliver quality work. So they may actually fire me if I just continue working my early schedule, but we'll see what happens I guess. Would be funny if they fired me and contacted me after when the environment got butchered. Their heads would explode at the price I'd offer. joe944 fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Aug 20, 2018 |
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Aug 20, 2018 17:44
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Dog_Meat posted:As Jaded Burnout says though, it all depends on your level of comfort with management and how much good mojo you've built up working the way you do. I meant more their comfort level with confrontation and potentially losing their job, but this also.
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Aug 20, 2018 17:51
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joe944 posted:Would be funny if they fired me and contacted me after when the environment got butchered. Their heads would explode at the price I'd offer. So, how do you feel about boats?
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Aug 20, 2018 20:01
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joe994, call their bluff.
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Aug 20, 2018 20:11
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Steakandchips posted:joe994, call their bluff. I 100% agree, especially since I'm not joe
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Aug 20, 2018 21:09
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