Aggravated by company culture...

I have a complaint that I would like to get off my chest. Where I work currently I am seeing something that I find a little disturbing. Yesterday I was dragged into a meeting regarding a specific report and how it did not provide person X with the information he needs to perform his job. I asked the question “Do we know for sure that this report ever showed this information or even that what it is designed to show is what we are expecting?” And several people stated that it had gone through many revisions and was always problematic and never quite gave the information that was expected regarding plant load. It had been like that for years. As the discussion progressed we came to the understanding that the new components to the system we purchased last summer would provide us the information that we need. Person X attended 2 days of training sessions in February on how to use this software and is still not doing it and management looks at me like this is my fault.

So how do I get across to people at this place that IT cannot possibly be responsible for training people on how to use software on the department level? This is why we have CBTs! If this were the case I would need not only to understand how to use every component of the software with great detail, but I would also need to understand how to do every person’s job. When do people begin to stop looking at stuff as “IT’s responsibility” and as “tools I need to perform my daily job function and I am therefore responsible for knowing and understanding?” I mean this is like a production guy going to the maintenance person (who fixes machines when they break) to get trained on how to make metal parts.

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Comments

veritas_libertas

Ouch! I sometimes run into this attitude from users, but our policy is that if the user needs to be "taught" how do something they must provide us with a charge code. Like you said, they were taught but probably were not paying any attention, or taking notes during that time.

TheShadow

This is bad, almost sounds like a gov'ment job. That culture is a no win situation because it seems to be based on covering ones' A**. I would suggest it is time to starting documenting things that you are responsible for when they are completed and broadcast e-mails with what you believe the next steps to be with appropriate BCC's if necessary. A comment at the end asking if anyone believes that there should be more to the task.

At future meetings such e-mails are invaluable for covering your own anatomy. Time to open your lemonade stand my friend.

Hyper-Me

Stand up for yourself. If someone else isn't doing their job and is trying to pin something on you public, in a meeting, then pin it right back on them. I will be da**ed if someone is going to accuse me of not doing my job when they are only covering up that they arent doing theirs.

Because you are in IT and because you are technically inclined, that provides you with leverage in learning a system over the average user...but that does NOT mean you supplant them in doing THEIR job. You could be there for advice or support, but not doing their job too. If that was the case, they need to get rid of the other person and pay you both of the salaries.

RobertKaucher

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Stand up for yourself. If someone else isn't doing their job and is trying to pin something on you public, in a meeting, then pin it right back on them. I will be da**ed if someone is going to accuse me of not doing my job when they are only covering up that they arent doing theirs.

Because you are in IT and because you are technically inclined, that provides you with leverage in learning a system over the average user...but that does NOT mean you supplant them in doing THEIR job. You could be there for advice or support, but not doing their job too. If that was the case, they need to get rid of the other person and pay you both of the salaries.

I knew you would say that.

But it is not that simple. This poor person has been put in the position of doing 3 people's jobs due to layoffs. God knows he isn't getting paid for three people! And I am willing to help out but I don't understand the theory behind the job. I'm an IT guy. It will take me months of self-education to get to the point where I can discuss scheduling the production for a factory with any sort of true understanding. I feel too much like management is setting people up to fail. They fired the person who was in charge of scheduling and dumped it on someone else who was already strapped and then look at me like I am supposed to download the information a la Matrix into his brain.

My issue here is that because it's on a computer it is seen as solely the domain of IT when management needs to say that it is IT's job to make sure it is working, ensure users have the access they require, and fix it when it breaks. It is the users' responsibility to know how to use it properly. And if that requires training we have a maintenance agreement that includes training. You cannot just train one guy on how to do everything and expect him to run around and hold everyone's hand when they can't do their jobs because they have not been trained.

@phoeneous - Smallish. 80 PCs max (after 3 layoffs). Probably twice as many employees.

eMeS

This is really a matter of establishing and enforcing clear boundaries that state what IT does and does not do, and what the customer does and does not do.

Very few organizations, regardless of their size, do this effectively.

MS

Pash

This is pure company politics, politics are bad, they do not fix anything.

You are in-house right rob? Not that it matters, because even if you were on contract on in-house you should have a scope of IT service somewhere. At the end of the day this user has been provided training, and should be using the system well within its capacity. At what level do you support this application/system? Do you provide training, do you provide 1st/2nd/3rd line support on this system? If there is no such scope of service and entailments, then I would just go with what Hyper-Me has suggested. There is a huge difference in trying to be helpful and just being a mug, lines have to be drawn or others will soon try and follow suit.

I have seen too many blame game politics recently myself.

I have something exactly the same at the moment with a specific application designed by a third party company, the app doesnt connect to the primary server only the backup server (config's are the same, but locations different), must be a firewall they say, there is no firewall in between, server configs are exactly the same, netstat shows a TCP established connection from client to server. But of course, the right rat hollas and IT will get shat on from a height, guess who is installing 2003 again tomorrow through ILO on the server in the data centre, yeh that would be me.

I am not being johnny nice anymore, but my boss was being, but he doesnt fix this stuff.

Pash

joey74055

eMeS wrote: »

This is really a matter of establishing and enforcing clear boundaries that state what IT does and does not do, and what the customer does and does not do.

Very few organizations, regardless of their size, do this effectively.

MS

Robert, are you the manger/director of your IT dept.? If your not the manager perhaps you could sit down with your manager and talk to him about this, maybe he could go talk to management and stick up for you and his/her dept.?

Hyper-Me

At my previous job, when speaking to my boss after being pissed off by an employee who expected me to basically do their job for them (because it involved a PC) I said "I can lead them to water, but im not going to dunk their damn head in the lake everytime they are thirsty"