IT departments of the world
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Let me share an observation I had recently and ask you what is TRWTF here. I've been in the industry for quite some time and I've worked in a few very different companies with different work cultures. Each case had one common point - every time the infrastructure/IT department people were acting like complete assholes. I don't know what the underlying reason is, but every conversation I've witnessed or taken part of, resulted in them taking a position of "how dare you take our time to ask for something?", "how dare you propose a new service, even when there's a business case?", "how dare you ask us to unblock customer's access to the service they bought after we firewalled them for no reason?". No matter how polite the people trying to have a conversation are, the other side always responds with a full-scale nuclear attack. Mutual respect? Why bother! Trying to work together? Nah. "We make the rules and everyone has to conform!"
Are IT departments TRWTF?
Is my luck TRWTF?
Is my career TRWTF?
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@NeighborhoodButcher The obvious answer is, yes.
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@NeighborhoodButcher they're paid less than you and they know it. That's all.
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@Gąska yet, they seem to hold all the power.
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@NeighborhoodButcher One place I worked, we used to bribe the IT people with food. It worked, at least for those specific people. But they seemed to be genuinely nice and helpful, even without the bribery.
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@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
Are IT departments TRWTF?
Is my luck TRWTF?
Is my career TRWTF?Yes.
Also they're probably understaffed, they'll invariably be the default target of blame for issues even when it's not their fault, they've probably had to deal with 493458 stupid questions for each sensible question, etc.
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@NeighborhoodButcher The attitude that I've seen in state government (but not only state government, mind you) is "users will get what they get if we feel like it." It's very difficult for me to cope with because I got into software development because I like to solve problems. Most IT people that I've worked with in the last decade don't want to be bothered and are an endless fountain of excuses. The situation reminds me of a quote (from Colin Powell) that I recently dug back up:
"Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership."
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@Zenith said in IT departments of the world:
@NeighborhoodButcher The attitude that I've seen in state government (but not only state government, mind you) is "users will get what they get if we feel like it." It's very difficult for me to cope with because I got into software development because I like to solve problems. Most IT people that I've worked with in the last decade don't want to be bothered and are an endless fountain of excuses. The situation reminds me of a quote (from Colin Powell) that I recently dug back up:
"Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership."
Why does it exclude the case where you've done a good job of training your people to solve their own problems?
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@mikehurley said in IT departments of the world:
Why does it exclude the case where you've done a good job of training your people to solve their own problems?
Because training is only half the battle. You need authority and resources to employ that training. And poor managers also deny those things (while crying about how nothing is getting done).
Edit: But, hey, what do I know, I get paid more to stay home and pursue personal projects (including application development) than I ever did as a productive engineer. Powell's "either/or" is not an XOR but an AND in my case. And, in a way, I've solved my problem without leadership - by not giving a damn.
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@Zenith while the quote is true, it doesn't really apply here, since we're supposed to be peers working together to find solutions, not a leader and team member. Yet, it seems one side wished to talk about solutions, while the other wants to talk about how much they're offended by the notion of having some work to do.
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@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
@Zenith while the quote is true, it doesn't really apply here, since we're supposed to be peers working together to find solutions, not a leader and team member. Yet, it seems one side wished to talk about solutions, while the other wants to talk about how much they're offended by the notion of having some work to do.
It's thanks to those kinds of people that we have bogus concepts like "internal customers."
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@mikehurley said in IT departments of the world:
It's thanks to those kinds of people that we have bogus concepts like "internal customers."
That's essentially how whole Samsung works.
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@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
@Zenith while the quote is true, it doesn't really apply here, since we're supposed to be peers working together to find solutions, not a leader and team member. Yet, it seems one side wished to talk about solutions, while the other wants to talk about how much they're offended by the notion of having some work to do.
I have been in exactly this situation (for way too long obviously). Not being able to work together to solve business problems is a sign that you're working with stupid or petty people. The real question is where they are, above, below, or all around you. Overall, it shows a lack of leadership in your organization. IT knows they'll keep being paid whether or not they deliver anything resembling results. Those working conditions actively drive away people interested in solving problems.
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@Zenith said in IT departments of the world:
It shows a lack of leadership in your organization. IT knows they'll keep being paid whether or not they deliver anything resembling results.
That's actually an interesting angle, when I think about it. In some cases, there were results delivered, but they were orthogonal to problems arising in development. Therefore management saw something was being done, but never saw how many problems slipped by.
In other cases, the management was a part of the problem. In my previous company, the VP of operations was known for doing everything to avoid any kind of work by his department. I remember one absurd situation when an internal QA ticket (where internal QA was a platform to identify and solve problems within the company) related to IT was totally dismissed by him, and later he marked it as resolved in my name.
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@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
the VP of operations was known for doing everything to avoid any kind of work by his department.
The
of power.
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@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
totally dismissed by him, and later he marked it as resolved in my name
Dismissing things totally is one thing, but resolving it in your name is another (and beyond the pale).
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@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
Are IT departments TRWTF?
Ours is mostly all right.
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@dkf said in IT departments of the world:
@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
totally dismissed by him, and later he marked it as resolved in my name
Dismissing things totally is one thing, but resolving it in your name is another (and beyond the pale).
It's starting to lean into fraud.
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I believe this is a sort of allergic reaction. Mental allergy. After years of interacting with idiots demanding impossible things, you become sensitized and even reasonable requests immediately invoke this 'oh jeez, not this shit again' feeling deep in the lizard brain. It's like shell-shocked soldiers being startled by fireworks.
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I am my own IT department and I find I have none of these issues.
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@loopback0 said in IT departments of the world:
@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
Are IT departments TRWTF?
Is my luck TRWTF?
Is my career TRWTF?Yes.
Also they're probably understaffed, they'll invariably be the default target of blame for issues even when it's not their fault, they've probably had to deal with 493458 stupid questions for each sensible question, etc.
All of this.
My first project after moving from dev to ops was a monitoring system that would collect network port throughput from every single switch in production and graph it. It was kind of fun and at first I didn't quite get why everyone seemed to think it's stupid. Then I learned it needed to exist only because it was the umpteenth time the head of development (I did dev work in a different company so I didn't know him) blamed the network for the streaming dropouts in his Java software when it was quite obvious they were due to a combination of network programming that looked like my C from the early 90s and GC problems that they even knew existed but were adamant were totally mitigated by their JVM startup parameter voodoo.Also, about twice a day:
I can't reach my workstation via VPN. Can you fix that please?
It doesn't ping, so it's probably turned off. Don't turn it off if you're planning on using it remotely. I can send it a wake-on-LAN and if you're lucky it will come up; otherwise someone will have to go there and push the button.
Butbutbut it's like 5 km to the office and we're in lockdown!
Dude, every single one one of my team is at least 500 times, two national borders and another lockdown further away, so … 
I can't check out $foo from github!
So what's the error message?
Permission denied (publickey).
OK. Do you have your key on the machine you're on?
Key?
BOFH is a survival strategy.
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@LaoC said in IT departments of the world:
Also, about twice a day:
I can't reach my workstation via VPN. Can you fix that please?
It doesn't ping, so it's probably turned off. Don't turn it off if you're planning on using it remotely. I can send it a wake-on-LAN and if you're lucky it will come up; otherwise someone will have to go there and push the button.
Butbutbut it's like 5 km to the office and we're in lockdown!
Dude, every single one one of my team is at least 500 times, two national borders and another lockdown further away, so … In their defense, if IT didn't do retarded stuff like automatic shutdowns and no way to change your expired password without going through the VPN that won't let you in because your password expired, that would be less of an issue. As my employer's operations have transitioned from "retarded IT" to "retarded non-IT managing retarded offshore IT," the same malaise of thoughtlessness has persisted...
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@mikehurley said in IT departments of the world:
@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
@Zenith while the quote is true, it doesn't really apply here, since we're supposed to be peers working together to find solutions, not a leader and team member. Yet, it seems one side wished to talk about solutions, while the other wants to talk about how much they're offended by the notion of having some work to do.
It's thanks to those kinds of people that we have bogus concepts like "internal customers."
Also for when your company doesn't credit the software department for the licenses for our software that they include with every copy of (custom art pack used throughout customer's company) or user license to (art service used across the US) they sell.
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@Zenith said in IT departments of the world:
@LaoC said in IT departments of the world:
Also, about twice a day:
I can't reach my workstation via VPN. Can you fix that please?
It doesn't ping, so it's probably turned off. Don't turn it off if you're planning on using it remotely. I can send it a wake-on-LAN and if you're lucky it will come up; otherwise someone will have to go there and push the button.
Butbutbut it's like 5 km to the office and we're in lockdown!
Dude, every single one one of my team is at least 500 times, two national borders and another lockdown further away, so … In their defense, if IT didn't do retarded stuff like automatic shutdowns and no way to change your expired password without going through the VPN that won't let you in because your password expired, that would be less of an issue.
That's indeed retarded but we're not doing any of that. If their workstations are shut down it's because they did it themselves. Or Windows didn't come back up from some automated upgrade, but that's Windows for you. We're not even forcing them to use a particular OS (inb4 VMS, NOS/VE: no)
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@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
we're supposed to be peers working together to find solutions, not a leader and team member. Yet, it seems one side wished to talk about solutions, while the other wants to talk about how much they're offended by the notion of having some work to do.
I have seen that attitude (and what's described in the OP) in basically all support departments.
For example, once I needed to renew a software licence used by my team and for some reason it fell onto me to handle that with finance. I had the quote from the vendor, and my manager's approval, so all that was left was to manage the actual invoicing, PO etc. I see that as being squarely and firmly finance's work, not mine, but they basically told me to handle it myself and fill in the request forms in the finance system myself. Which I was entirely unable to do, not having the slightest idea what the 42 different fields meant. In the end it cascaded through several layers of uninterested finance people bouncing my questions around, until someone decided (or was told to? but they were very nice about it, so I assume they decided by themselves) to come and actually hold my hand while I filled the form (they could have done it directly, but at that point that didn't make much difference anymore).
Another example is a time I had an intern who wanted to use a different seat (an exercise ball). I (stupidly, in hindsight) told him to ask HR/facilities about it since they're the one who handle that normally, but it went into a spin of CYA/"not standard"/"not my problem" until it cascaded down to the on-site nurse, who very nicely talked with him and gave him a (tentative... but of course there weren't any issues later, why would have there been any?) go-ahead.
Yet another example, IT this time, is an occasion our remote computing centre upgraded to a newer Linux version. Official message from IT was essentially "we're doing the switch tomorrow" and trying to explain to them that our software had never been compiled, let alone tested or used, on the new system and that therefore all our users would be entirely unable to work, was all in vain. Until it fell down onto one individual IT administrator who actually listen to us and was very nice and helped us work out a plan where they kept some machines on the old system, delayed the upgrade for a couple of weeks (it was already years behind the current version of the distrib we were using, so a couple of weeks didn't make any difference at that point...) and worked with us to port our software to the new system.
The common thread in all these is that you have people who should be working to solve the business' problems, but instead work to solve their team's problems, and that it only get solved when you manage to cut through the layers of management incompetence/disinterest/CYA and get to an individual who's actually interested in solving problems.
So, yeah, long story short: the issue to me is teams that exist to support other business functions (not to do the actual business themselves) but who refuse to see it that way (or sometimes are unable to see it that way, due to the size of the company making them too removed from those who actually do the company business?).
Being myself in one such team (R&D), I agree that it's not always easy to accept that whatever you think is a good idea will not happen because "client needs THIS!!1!1!!" but ultimately that's what matters and you can stuff your pride.
Internal clients & billing is just yet another example of trying to solve a human problem with technical solutions, and as always with those, it doesn't really work and can make the problem even worse (we had other teams refusing to call on us to help them with what is our expertise, and thus delivered piss-poor end results, because calling on us would have meant sharing the client's margin with us).
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My experience is that the culture in an IT department usually reflects the company culture.
If the IT department treats their customers (the business) like shit, there is a good chance that the business doesn't care much for their customers either.And it doesn't help if departments (IT vs. business) have different - often conflicting - targets.
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In my experience, it comes down to "nobody is as dumb as all of us".
Once I'm talking to a specific person, things tend to be fine. There's the initial assessment-handshake, where each party tries to figure out how dumb the other is (did you try to turn in off and on again?). Past that, more often than not, the persons turn out to be quite helpful and seem interested. (In the other cases, it helps to come prepared, and make sure they understand that they're here for help and not for approval, because the latter has already been decided at a higher level.)
Now, on the other hand, as a whole, IT departments tend to have the dumbest fucking ideas ever known to mankind, and their moronic policies deserve all the hate they get. I don't quite know how they manage to get to that point (and typically neither does the boots-on-ground IT personnel).
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@cvi said in IT departments of the world:
Now, on the other hand, as a whole, IT departments tend to have the dumbest fucking ideas ever known to mankind, and their moronic policies deserve all the hate they get. I don't quite know how they manage to get to that point (and typically neither does the boots-on-ground IT personnel).
CTO: "So the CEO got his account hacked"
IT: "Was it because his password was [InsertCompanyName]?"
CTO: "Shush. Due to this I have declared that all passwords shall be 16 characters with an even mix of letters, numbers, special characters, and unicode emojis. They must also change their password every 2 days"
IT: "..right. uh so you know that uh.. well firstly that's not really gonna change much and well also we already have to deal with about 15 password resets an hour and"
CTO: "Shut up and make it happen"
IT: "oookayyyyy..."
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@Luhmann The "getting paid anyway" part, for example...
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@nerd4sale said in IT departments of the world:
And it doesn't help if departments (IT vs. business) have different - often conflicting - targets.
I think a good starting point is to acknowledge that they always have different targets, and that they are often conflicting.
Take IT, (one of) their role is to ensure the security of IT systems. The best way to perfectly secure a system is to make it entirely inaccessible, but that's obviously against the target of the business! Finance wants each and every penny spent to have the perfect audit trail, facilities wants the building to be pristine, R&D wants to play with new techs etc. None of those goals are "make money" (which is the overall business target).
That's fine, I don't see it as an issue by itself, it's just the consequence of the specialisation of functions in a large company. It only becomes an issue when you lose sight of the fact that a support function is "just" a support function and must always be subservient to the overall goal of the company (e.g. making money). Which happens far too often, in part because of ego ("I'm a VP [of a support function], why should I listen to a meagre 'manager' [of an actual business function]?").
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@remi said in IT departments of the world:
Yet another example, IT this time, is an occasion our remote computing centre upgraded to a newer Linux version. Official message from IT was essentially "we're doing the switch tomorrow" and trying to explain to them that our software had never been compiled, let alone tested or used, on the new system and that therefore all our users would be entirely unable to work, was all in vain.
The biggest problem with IT in large software companies seems to be that they're so used to dealing with problems from HR/finance/sales that they eventually collectively forget they're working for a software company. All of their policies and processes are tailored to dealing with computer-illiterate employees. So when they suddenly have a developer talking to them after making a decision that's not only inconvenient, but literally prevents the software guys from doing their jobs, they have no idea what to do and it takes days or weeks until the requests ends up in front of a person who actually understands the problem. Unless, of course, someone finds a security guideline that contradicts the requests (again, written with non-developers in mind), in which case the ticket gets closed before it ever reaches the right people.
It's incredibly frustrating, but I don't think there's a good solution to this problem. It's just something you have to deal with at every large employer.
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@Luhmann said in IT departments of the world:
@Tsaukpaetra said in IT departments of the world:
I have none of these issues.
But plenty others!
And computer problems, too.
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@NeighborhoodButcher said in IT departments of the world:
Are IT departments TRWTF?
I assure you that my company's IT department is more insensitive than yours. As an example, we have the "can't change your password until after you log into the VPN" problem mentioned above. I can't convince my IT department that it's a problem worthy of solving, yet alone to actually solve it. All they do is send more emails, with more bold and capital letters, reminding everyone to remember to change their passwords before they expire.
BTW, I'm the CISO.
I'm occasionally in meetings where we review and triage tickets. The IT department never considers working on something until every possible manual workaround is first considered and attempted twice. Our process is now a massive ball of workarounds and no one actually knows what anyone does.
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@Jaime
All signs point to a shitty company culture
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@remi said in IT departments of the world:
So, yeah, long story short: the issue to me is teams that exist to support other business functions (not to do the actual business themselves) but who refuse to see it that way (or sometimes are unable to see it that way, due to the size of the company making them too removed from those who actually do the company business?).
Heh...our old project manager is semi-retired and handles lots of contract scut type work. He's a genius at this kind of shit.
He's currently working on some kind of "contract close-out" task that has to be done. I guess it's basically a post-contract audit, checking all the invoices and payments and etc. This is for stuff that ended years ago, BTW.
Anywho, he has to deal with our finance people and I hear him say stuff like, "It takes two weeks for stuff they enter into the finance system to go through." And that's when they actually respond to him at all. These people sound like massive wastes of oxygen. And it doesn't help that the people on the customer's side are even worse.
I swear, this guy is a hero for being able to deal with that nonsense. His example proved to me that I never want to go anywhere near being a program manager.
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@boomzilla said in IT departments of the world:
I never want to go anywhere near being a program manager.
Amen! At a previous job, I was supposed to take program management training, but I managed to fill my quarterly training goal with other, more relevant training until I was no longer with that company.
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@HardwareGeek said in IT departments of the world:
@boomzilla said in IT departments of the world:
I never want to go anywhere near being a program manager.
Amen! At a previous job, I was supposed to take program management training, but I managed to fill my quarterly training goal with other, more relevant training until I was no longer with that company.
I was offered a team lead position in the not-too-distant past. It had enough of manager-y-ness that I decided I didn't really want to do that. I like coding and solving architectural questions. I don't like running meetings or giving personnel feedback.
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@PotatoEngineer said in IT departments of the world:
I like coding and solving architectural questions.
You've got to pick at least one devil. In small to medium companies, moving up means management. You'll have to go somewhere stupid big in order to move up and remain technical. I worked at a fortune 20 company, and one of the advantages was that even though I was already in a six-figure position, I had a lot of room to grow.
I'm back to a smaller company now, and the horrors of management aren't any worse than the horrors of companies that employ 50,000 people.
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@Jaime said in IT departments of the world:
@PotatoEngineer said in IT departments of the world:
I like coding and solving architectural questions.
You've got to pick at least one devil. In small to medium companies, moving up means management. You'll have to go somewhere stupid big in order to move up and remain technical. I worked at a fortune 20 company, and one of the advantages was that even though I was already in a six-figure position, I had a lot of room to grow.
I'm back to a smaller company now, and the horrors of management aren't any worse than the horrors of companies that employ 50,000 people.
Yeah, I'm at a stupid-big company; lots of room to grow in a technical role without touching management. (And I even like it here!)
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@Jaime said in IT departments of the world:
You've got to pick at least one devil. In small to medium companies, moving up means management.
Not always. In fact, I'd say that's rarer now (at least here in Silly Valley). About 15-20y ago, I was at a small company that had that problem - I was maxed out on the salary band (like instead of a 2-3K increase, I got 200 - my boss worked hard to max out bonuses). With me and one other person that went mgmt then backtracked, they finally put in a tech track. Every company (200-300 people) I've been at since has had a tech track.
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@dcon from what I've seen, the tech track is often tech in name only.
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@Gąska In state government, there are 3 grades of tech work and 7 levels of management above them. The lines between that last tech role and first management role are blurring now, usually in the direction of more management (filing tickets with vendors, if you feel like it, between meetings where you smile and nod at everything they say). I was just about maxed out a year into employment and two years out of college. Nowhere to go from there...probably explains why the level of tech sophistication of my "peers" these days is able to run Excel but not use any of the cool features.
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@remi said in IT departments of the world:
facilities wants the building to be pristine
Facilities wants people to leave them alone. Cleaning the building and fixing HVAC issues are side effects.
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@Parody True. In the same way as the best way for IT to secure a system is to make it entirely inaccessible, the best way for facilities to keep the building pristine is also to make it inaccessible. And the best way for finance to ensure every penny spent has a proper audit trail is to not spend a single penny. And the best way for HR to ensure employees don't have any complaints is to not have any employees. And the best way for R&D to tinker with new stuff freely is to not have anyone use their previous work. And the best way for HSE to ensure no accident happens is to not have any activity happening.
There is a pattern that's starting to emerge in these examples, and it's very relevant to the OP... essentially, support functions are happy when they're being paid to do nothing, which isn't quite aligned with business interests (
:i_thought_we_had_nicholas_cage_you_dont_say_but_i_cant_find_it:).
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@remi said in IT departments of the world:
@Parody True. In the same way as the best way for IT to secure a system is to make it entirely inaccessible, the best way for facilities to keep the building pristine is also to make it inaccessible. And the best way for finance to ensure every penny spent has a proper audit trail is to not spend a single penny. And the best way for HR to ensure employees don't have any complaints is to not have any employees. And the best way for R&D to tinker with new stuff freely is to not have anyone use their previous work. And the best way for HSE to ensure no accident happens is to not have any activity happening.
There is a pattern that's starting to emerge in these examples, and it's very relevant to the OP... essentially, support functions are happy when they're being paid to do nothing, which isn't quite aligned with business interests (
:i_thought_we_had_nicholas_cage_you_dont_say_but_i_cant_find_it:).It's the antithesis of the paperclip catastrophe.
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@Watson Not entirely, in that in some versions the paperclip AI starts by firing all employees so as to minimise paperclip consumption. But then the parable usually goes to making everyone work as hard as they can to maximise paperclip supply, so yeah, the opposite of support functions. The difference here being that humans have the built-in safety of laziness/egoism which means that most don't truly search to maximise their goal-function, only to maximise it enough for themselves to be happy.
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@NeighborhoodButcher
not my experience, actually.
the worst I've come across was a server admin who knew less about managing a server than I, a self-proclaimed "not a server guy, I just use xampp".
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Fast forward to today. I was supposed to do a training on a certain technology. One of the ops guys doesn't like it, so he went behind my back and blocked my training. Without saying a single word to me. That's another level of arrogance here.
