Favoritism in IT

I'm guessing this is actually quite normal in any field but whats the deal with favoritism around the office?

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I don't think it has anything to do with IT, specifically. Generally speaking, regardless of which industry or sector you are in, you will find favoritism. It is human nature.

blatini

Damn women and H1B1's get all the promotions... cant a white guy get a break!

For the three people who DM'd me about this - it's a joke referencing other threads

networker050184

That's just human nature. Nothing to do with IT.

UnixGuy

Well alive...just like every other field. It's a bit surprising because it's meant to be a technical job where skill should speak louder...and it does...but favorism still exist.

thomas_

A few things I've noticed over the years:

Smokers automatically get more breaks than non-smokers.

Single/no family people get shafted more often in regards to time off, having to work holidays, etc because, you know, they don't have a family/are single.

CiscoASA2202

thomas_ wrote: »

A few things I've noticed over the years:

Smokers automatically get more breaks than non-smokers.

Single/no family people get shafted more often in regards to time off, having to work holidays, etc because, you know, they don't have a family/are single.

That's normal social bonding

Don't do what I did and sit in the office and throw yourself on every project you could get your hands on while everyone else is outside every hour and a half for a smoke break. Its normal bonding, If I could do things differently I would go out for those smoke breaks with the team since if you don't you are missing out and are looked at in an odd way if all you do is work and go home.

thomas_

So in order to do "normal social bonding" you have to subject yourself to the hazards of cigarette smoke when you're not a smoker? It's still a form of favoritism especially when the boss is a smoker and smokers get more facetime with the boss than non-smokers just due to the fact that they smoke.

Danielm7

I feel like I've told this story here before but in my first IT job there was a group of smokers that would go outside every hour for at least 10 minutes. Once, it was a really nice day, I decided to go see the sun for a few minutes with them. When I came back in I was grilled by my manager for taking a break when I should have been working. I was told it was different for them because they smoked. I considered just getting candy cigarettes so I could go outside a few extra times a day.

A coworker of mine smokes now, he's a contractor and paid very well. One day I did rough math and figured out it was 10s of thousands a year, just in smoke breaks that he was being paid for, because he took lunch on top of that.

Anyway, back to the OP, as everyone else said, it's not just IT it's everywhere. My current workplace is very political on certain levels, a few directors and the CIO have tight knit group and will squeeze out any employee that any of them decide they don't like. I didn't realize it for awhile working here but it's been pointed out to me by a few long term employees how they pick and choose who they like and who gets the quick promotions.

UnixGuy

Danielm7 wrote: »

.. Once, it was a really nice day, I decided to go see the sun for a few minutes with them. When I came back in I was grilled by my manager for taking a break when I should have been working. I was told it was different for them because they smoked.....

That manager is an idiot....

Danielm7

UnixGuy wrote: »

That manager is an idiot....

She was, less than a year after I left she was fired for embezzling from a non-profit, not really a top notch person.

dave330i

Being envious of smokers. Interesting.

blargoe

dave330i wrote: »

Being envious of smokers. Interesting.

I try to take a ~5 min walk outside when the weather is favorable 3-4x daily while at work. Lap around the building usually. If anyone asks what I am doing, I say "smoke break" or "Vitamin D break". No one ever questions me further. My company can be a steaming pile of crap sometimes, but my bosses are cool.

Any person who honestly believes that nicotine addicts are somehow entitled to 80 extra minutes of free time daily on the clock, to the exclusion of everyone else, is a moron.

Queue

I thought the government and private sector had pretty much locked down smoking. I hardly see any people smoking around here in public and I live in the South. When I use to live up North no one was smoking since way back when. Not to mention where I work you are not allowed to smoke on campus at all. There still is a small group of people you will see every once in a while, by a chain link fence at the back of the property in non maintained weeds puffing smokes.

CiscoASA2202

thomas_ wrote: »

So in order to do "normal social bonding" you have to subject yourself to the hazards of cigarette smoke when you're not a smoker? It's still a form of favoritism especially when the boss is a smoker and smokers get more facetime with the boss than non-smokers just due to the fact that they smoke.

Yea, this is normal social bonding. If you want to be in their crowd and group of circle you have to go outside and hang out with them if they let you. I went outside and they mostly talked about other coworkers and behind peoples back who I thought they were close with, as it turns out and I have talked about this with other already this is just the normal social order of things. People have been doing it for a long time.

CiscoASA2202

Danielm7 wrote: »

I feel like I've told this story here before but in my first IT job there was a group of smokers that would go outside every hour for at least 10 minutes. Once, it was a really nice day, I decided to go see the sun for a few minutes with them. When I came back in I was grilled by my manager for taking a break when I should have been working. I was told it was different for them because they smoked. I considered just getting candy cigarettes so I could go outside a few extra times a day.

A coworker of mine smokes now, he's a contractor and paid very well. One day I did rough math and figured out it was 10s of thousands a year, just in smoke breaks that he was being paid for, because he took lunch on top of that.

Anyway, back to the OP, as everyone else said, it's not just IT it's everywhere. My current workplace is very political on certain levels, a few directors and the CIO have tight knit group and will squeeze out any employee that any of them decide they don't like. I didn't realize it for awhile working here but it's been pointed out to me by a few long term employees how they pick and choose who they like and who gets the quick promotions.

Yea, our management had to bring it up in a meeting one time to say they mentioned it, many groups of people were going out smoking often and nobody was really working. After they mentioned it, it never stopped and it is normal to go outside and smoke/talk with your coworkers. I wish I knew that before taking on that role...I especially like how after the meeting, everyone went for a smoke break

Popular kids do what they want...

labscloud

I fixed this issue by putting down the cigs. I now use an e-cig that I don't exhale when I use at my desk, so my boss is cool with it since no vapor is being put out. Now I don't have to leave my desk at all.

quickman007

At my old job, our supervisor would spend 1-2 hours of the day on smoke breaks. I still can't understand why this is acceptable. Eventually I just started taking random breaks whenever I wanted. Luckily my current job is tobacco free.

But yeah, favortism is everywhere.

scaredoftests

Not just IT...
Be your own drummer anyway...

thomas_

labscloud wrote: »

I fixed this issue by putting down the cigs. I now use an e-cig that I don't exhale when I use at my desk, so my boss is cool with it since no vapor is being put out. Now I don't have to leave my desk at all.

I'm not sure how you use an e-cig without exhaling. You have to inhale to get it into your lungs, then you have to exhale as a natural part of your breathing and you'll exhale some of the vapor as well:

http://www.tobacco.ucsf.edu/new-study-shows-e-cig-users-exhale-nicotine-and-fine-particles-air-where-bystanders-are-breathing

ITSec14

I can relate...

I work with a guy who is a serious a$$ kisser and it drives me nuts. He's always up leaderships behinds and doesn't communicate well within our team. I'm all about doing things to promote myself and my accomplishments, but I feel like being a suck up and trying to take credit for things where you shouldn't is something a weasel does.

NetworkingStudent

I used to work at a print shop. When operator positions opened up, they always had someone lined up for this role.

I knew one guy that got promoted twice, because his soon to be father in law was an operator.

As far as the IT side goes well I used to work at a IT company owned by two brothers.

One brother did the IT side, and another did the business side.

The brother that did the IT side was a jerk, and I'm not just saying I think he is a jerk. I heard his brother say...I know my brother can be a jerk to someone. His attitude wouldn't fly in most IT environments.

There would be things I disagreed with and I told my manager. My manager agreed with what I said, and he said couldn't do anything about it, because he said it would be him against the two brothers.

Anyways there will always be favoritism.. not unless you're a truck driver , or work for yourself with no employees.

You just gotta role with the punches.

SpetsRepair

ITSec14 wrote: »

I can relate...

I work with a guy who is a serious a$$ kisser and it drives me nuts. He's always up leaderships behinds and doesn't communicate well within our team. I'm all about doing things to promote myself and my accomplishments, but I feel like being a suck up and trying to take credit for things where you shouldn't is something a weasel does.

Welcome to IT, some people have a vision of what they want so they do what it takes. Frankly, I've never been able to do something like that but everyone who is a kiss ass ends up getting promoted earlier than others, its common practice since "kissing ass" really just means being social and building a relationship with everyone in leadership since they sign your pay checks and its good to have them in your pockt. The person doing the ass kissing doesn't really need to understand how networks, security, software etc.. work since they have someone there who can help them figure out the answer. Its especially nice when you're the one giving them answers and they get promoted since they spent time building relationships while you spent time doing the work of multiple engineers and they go for a smoke break to socialize...

Danielh22185

Like others have said it really doesn't have anything to do with IT, its just bad management in general.

I just left a job where our senior engineer was completely untouchable not to mention the laziest person I had ever met IN MY LIFE. Sad thing was he is very intelligent and knowledgeable yet just didn't care. His potential is huge if he just were to put out some effort. Unfortunately he also became a large driving force for me to finally leave the company.

We worked a Sun-Tues/Wed - 12hr shifts. He wouldn't come into the office on Sundays because he knew my management wasn't there those days, yet we were required to. On top of that he would never respond via Lync on those days. If he did it would be hours later. Obviously not working...

On the days he would come in he would be 10-20 minutes late everyday. Normally I wouldn't care too much if it was a one off on occasion and the person was a hard worker, but we also had to take turnover from a shift that ran over night (who were itching to leave). That sometimes meant being pulled into a hot issue 1st thing in the morning 6/7am, so he was never there to receive turnover because he was never on time avoiding it completely.

Those days that he would come in he would on average take a 2hr lunch break on top of 2 or 3 additional 30 minutes breaks. Sometimes he would be out 3-4hrs on lunch with another buddy (in the same mgmt structure). Those 3-4hr days he would again sneak it by my boss who also happened to work from home on those days.

Also somehow and miraculously he was able to secure a official WFH day on Wednesdays. So he was only ever in the office 1-2 days per week, every week on average only really "working" maybe 50% of his day at most.

His pure laziness and flat out negligence to do anything of value again flew completely under the radar. The dude would fall asleep and snore LOUDLY at his desk at least once a week too (and he sat RIGHT NEXT TO my manager). I worked with this guy for years, so it wasn't simply the fact that it wasn't being caught yet by management, they simply didn't care and gave him endless rope. However me and my other coworkers they wasted no time at all grilling us on the little things and micromanaged us to death.

God I don't miss that job for a second...

ITSec14

SpetsRepair wrote: »

Welcome to IT, some people have a vision of what they want so they do what it takes. Frankly, I've never been able to do something like that but everyone who is a kiss ass ends up getting promoted earlier than others, its common practice since "kissing ass" really just means being social and building a relationship with everyone in leadership since they sign your pay checks and its good to have them in your pockt. The person doing the ass kissing doesn't really need to understand how networks, security, software etc.. work since they have someone there who can help them figure out the answer. Its especially nice when you're the one giving them answers and they get promoted since they spent time building relationships while you spent time doing the work of multiple engineers and they go for a smoke break to socialize...

There is nothing wrong with being social and building relationships with the right people, but when you take other people's ideas and present them as your own, it quickly becomes a hostile work environment. Unfortunately in the workplace, if you raise the concern you are often seen as the problem and can never recover from that reputation. I counter a lot of this by copying management in on emails when it deals with something I'm working on. Everyone should do whats necessary to protect their professional interests. The industry is too competitive to not protect oneself from this stuff.

alias454

Maybe the answer is to not give a s**t about what others do/don't do and worry about what needs to be done. I've noticed over the years in several different industries that people like to tear other people down instead of finding a way to get "special" treatment too. I've always had good relationships with my bosses because I work my ass off for them. If that somehow makes one an ass kisser then so be it.

I also noticed a couple of rants against smokers. I smoke and go out 3-4 times per day(trying to quit but it's hard). I don't take an hour lunch and put in a lot of time after hours related to my job duties(patches, upgrades, etc.). If my job is getting done to the satisfaction of my boss then who cares how many times a day I go out?

@Itsec: To the point about taking credit for the work of someone else, I agree whole heartedly that it is despicable. I have apparently been really lucky to never have worked in that kind of environment.

matai

Play the game, become a favorite, get ahead

Chevel

That's everywhere though do what you need to pay the bills and leave. Life is far too short for that stuff.

CiscoASA2202

Chevel wrote: »

That's everywhere though do what you need to pay the bills and leave. Life is far too short for that stuff.

Yea, I guess you might be right, it just sucks to see others get ahead since they know everyone meanwhile they're troubleshooting a network issue and they can't even figure out you need a route out to the internet

Chevel

CiscoASA2202 wrote: »

Yea, I guess you might be right, it just sucks to see others get ahead since they know everyone meanwhile they're troubleshooting a network issue and they can't even figure out you need a route out to the internet

It does but there's nothing you can do about it. Gain experience, cert up, and move it.

Press ANY Key

I've earned my favoritism by buying Krispy Kreme donuts and Chipotle for the team

:D Seriously, favoritism happens everywhere. Things will never change.

I used to work as a contractor at the old AOL campus in Dulles, VA. My job required me to move from building to building all day. My co-workers and I noticed that when we would go out on a service call, we always saw the same people standing around and smoking. Yes, AOL back then was laid back but this was ridiculous. We even wondered to each other whether they actually did any work there.

Unfortunately for them, three months later, AOL cleaned house and laid off most of their staff from that site.