What is the Worst IT Employee you have ever dealt with in your career?

basicially the title says it all.

What kind of IT Employee tends to be overall the worst kind you have ever hired or dealt with?

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DatabaseHead

Ignorant lazy people

NetworkNewb

Got a coworker right now that complains about everything. Extremely annoying to work with.

MJK9550

People who think they know it all and get annoyed anytime you ask a question about anything. No one knows it all, and it never hurts to ask questions and confirm something.

Trucido

My old manager let me go because he didn't like my GFs mom but she was FTE and he couldn't do anything directly to her.

Long story short; Childish Leadership.

thomas_

I would say people who:

-complain a lot
-like to argue with their boss about doing something, when it's not a safety, health, security, or regulatory concern. I understand bringing things to your bosses attention, but once you've told them and they still want to proceed a certain way then just CYA and do it.
-don't want to do anything at work.
-can't be bothered to learn or become better at their job.
-Makes it seem like a huge inconvenience when ever they have to do something for you, but it's their job to do that for you.

tmtex

Yea I know a real bad one. Every day I say to myself how are these people ( Mgmt.) so blind on what he is doing, this is insane One day it will burn him.

Lexluethar

People who are lazy
People who don't take initiative and figure things out themselves
People who act like they know everything but know very little
Pretty much anything involving people

blargoe

For 4 years I worked with a "peer" who was supposed to be my equal in role, responsibility and skillset. He instead was stuck in a legacy mindset, with service desk/entry admin level skills, total lack of interest in anything other than chatting up women and running his side business, and a non-existent work ethic. Taking 2-3 hour lunches regularly, clocking in remotely and then coming in to the office, things like that. Had no problem lying right to your face or selling someone else up the river for something he screwed up. Would gripe to anyone who would listen about how unfair he was being treated when asked to work on something outside of his small Microsoft OS comfort zone, while I am expected to be an expert on anything that isn't a router.

I was told flat out by several managers that HR would not touch the issue because of being an affirmative action hire. Too afraid of a lawsuit. So the guy gets away with murder for years, knows no one will ever do anything and gloats at all the "slap on the wrist" type actions taken when he gets caught doing something extreme enough to get canned or worse at other companies. I could write an entire thread on the crap this guy got away with... he was the worst anyone here had ever seen at any company.

This nightmare ended for me recently, thank God, some IT leadership possessing a sack finally came in the door a little less than a year ago and was able to make something happen. I would have left long before had the pay and benefits not been top notch for my area (and I have looked extensively).

UnixGuy

blargoe wrote: »

.. because of being an affirmative action hire. Too afraid of a lawsuit.

....

What does this mean? What's so special about him??

blargoe wrote: »

..some IT leadership possessing a sack finally came in the door a little less than a year ago and was able to make something happen
....

I'm curious, what did they do to stop him?

DatabaseHead

@Blargoe that's extremely common, it comes down to how legal wants to handle those types of situations.

Nothing quite that egregious but nasty nonetheless..... We had a guy who did similar actions no delivery on projects, hung over 24-7, was a heck of a system engineer though, however anything outside that scope he wasn't touching. He's still there today, it's been years.

I finally asked the big boss man what happened he said it wasn't worth the risk so they put him off in a corner office supporting some farming technology. That was the last I saw of him. Funny thing was he received a pay bump, it was as marginal as you can get, 7% or something but he was technically promoted lol. Evidently to avoid a law suit they had to church it up like a promotion.

blargoe

UnixGuy wrote: »

What does this mean? What's so special about him??

I'm curious, what did they do to stop him?

He is of a minority ethnic group and a *cough* disabled military veteran. Would cry racism anytime someone tried to take disciplinary action under previous leadership, HR/Legal were too afraid of being sued and/or being in the news, and the lower managers just stopped trying for years to do anything about this guy.

It is hard to explain "what changed" and how he was finally stopped. We had very, very weak IT leadership for a long time until the past year or so. Coupled with an abrupt change in company focus, several changes have occurred recently to bring things into a more proper alignment (lots of waste eliminated, a strong leader holding middle and lower managers accountable, slowly cutting non productive employees/managers). I don't know what exactly he did to finally get fired. It was a miserable situation for me, watching him sit there on his iPhone for hours doing no work while his manager and other engineers not impacted by his laziness crack jokes about it. Now that he is gone I can honestly say that it has added very little to my workload, but then again when you are already doing 2.5 people's jobs, you aren't going to notice an extra 20 minutes worth of simple tickets escalated from helpdesk per day.

The dumpster fire of a VMware environment I inherited, or the prior strategy of adding accounts to Domain Admins as a primary troubleshooting step should have been enough grounds to fire him just by itself.