How does this happen? (Venting, sorry)

I work in the access provisioning department where we create and modify network access all day long. AD has a big part in our job (creating users, thin clients, etc) as well as Citrix, Meditech, etc access.

Recently my manager hired on this guy who has 10+ years of IT experience, a CCNA, and supposedly studied for the CCNP and MCSE but just never took the test. According to my manager, they used to work together 5 years ago and this guy was a great employee (I guess he dealt with networking and troubleshooting at that job). Well... I've been training this guy for 5 weeks now and he still can't understand how to use AD, can't navigated around an account creation, can't figure out shortcut keys (we're talking ctrl-c, ctrl-v. The guy literally highlights a word, right clicks, copies, then moves to the other screen, right clicks, pastes, etc at the speed of a crippled snail), doesn't seem to be catching on and learning anything, types less than 20 WPM when he does type, can't figure out how to create accounts in other systems, simple concepts escape him, etc. This guy has been there for 5 weeks now and has been processing 4-6 requests a day while the rest of my department is in the 30-50 a day range.

I'm curious, but how does this happen? Did the guy have skills before and just got rusty after being unemployed for a year and a half? Isn't he supposed to catch on after 5 weeks? People on their first day get more tickets done. I'm just perplexed... I would say this guy BSed on his resume, but according to the boss, he used to have a great work ethic and new how to get things done on his resume. Just frustrated. I have to train this guy and I've been trying but it's not going forward at all. I would think someone with a CCNA and who studied even for just the 70-290 would have no problem doing this job.

Any advice or ideas?

</end rant>

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Comments

Bl8ckr0uter

Because most people who use **** are pretty shitty at their jobs

Seriously though, I am not sure. I mean a have very little AD experience and I know making a user isn't that hard and I have only been in IT for 3 years. I would say that he BS'd his way to get the job AND you boss is full of BS if he thinks that he was an excellent employee. We let me not say that, maybe by "great employee" he meant "stayed out of trouble and didn't bother me" or something like that. What kind of IT experience does he have? He could have been doing something extremely specialized or low level and just never picked up anything else.

Michael.J.Palmer

There is a slight generation gap when it comes to specific IT workers, people entering the field today may be considered more "savvy" than those who entered the field more than 10 years ago. For example, most major shortcut keys for Windows they now teach in middle school/high school so you end up using them pretty early on, not to mention typing classes are more prominant, so that would explain why he doesn't use the shortcut keys or type more than 20 WPM, he's just "old school" when it comes to IT work in that regard probably...

Now onto not knowing AD though... I'm fairly new to IT field as a career and how things work in a business environment and even I have the basic concepts of how an AD works, at the very least I'm fairly confident I could perform the duties that this gentleman has to perform on a daily basis with very little problem. It sounds like there may be some personal problems that are keeping his work ethic down... not to mention if he's been working in IT continuously for 10 years... I can't imagine what he was doing if he doesn't know how to work with an AD, etc. Did he work in a PC repair shop? Just seems very odd that he'd not even know the basic information.

But I guess that's my two cents. I'd say I'm like you in a way, I'd be ranting almost every night to my wife when I got home from work, actually... now that I think of it, I have done that before, just not regarding IT work,

.

It'll be alright in the long run, I'm sure your employer eventually sets quotas on how many tickets are completed per day, if that's the case then he'll either be forced to pick up the slack or forced out and someone else will be brought in.

Hyper-Me

The same reason that the CTO at my previous job hired a personal friend and paid him 70k a year out of the gate all while telling me that they had no money to give me a raise on my 40k salary.

Politics.

Dude knew the hiring manager and he got a job, doesnt matter if he can do the job or not. Oh and be careful complaining about him, since he IS the managers friend.

Hyper-Me

Michael.J.Palmer wrote: »

There is a slight generation gap when it comes to specific IT workers, people entering the field today may be considered more "savvy" than those who entered the field more than 10 years ago. For example, most major shortcut keys for Windows they now teach in middle school/high school so you end up using them pretty early on, not to mention typing classes are more prominant, so that would explain why he doesn't use the shortcut keys or type more than 20 WPM, he's just "old school" when it comes to IT work in that regard probably...

Inexcuseable.

If you can't keep up with the industry and have your skills match other potential employees than you do not deserve a job.

Iristheangel

Michael.J.Palmer wrote: »

There is a slight generation gap when it comes to specific IT workers, people entering the field today may be considered more "savvy" than those who entered the field more than 10 years ago. For example, most major shortcut keys for Windows they now teach in middle school/high school so you end up using them pretty early on, not to mention typing classes are more prominant, so that would explain why he doesn't use the shortcut keys or type more than 20 WPM, he's just "old school" when it comes to IT work in that regard probably...

Now onto not knowing AD though... I'm fairly new to IT field as a career and how things work in a business environment and even I have the basic concepts of how an AD works, at the very least I'm fairly confident I could perform the duties that this gentleman has to perform on a daily basis with very little problem. It sounds like there may be some personal problems that are keeping his work ethic down... not to mention if he's been working in IT continuously for 10 years... I can't imagine what he was doing if he doesn't know how to work with an AD, etc. Did he work in a PC repair shop? Just seems very odd that he'd not even know the basic information.

But I guess that's my two cents. I'd say I'm like you in a way, I'd be ranting almost every night to my wife when I got home from work, actually... now that I think of it, I have done that before, just not regarding IT work, .

It'll be alright in the long run, I'm sure your employer eventually sets quotas on how many tickets are completed per day, if that's the case then he'll either be forced to pick up the slack or forced out and someone else will be brought in.

To answer your question, I believe he was a network technician at his previous place of employment. He was also out of work for about a year and a half. I'm just really taken aback by how slow he is with a computer as well as how incapable he is when it comes to learning anything new. Not only that, but we have SOPs for him to use which details everything he needs to do STEP by STEP with screenshots. Anyways, I've been recommending for my manager to let him go because he's shown absolutely no improvement in 5 weeks and no matter how many times I tell him the same thing, he makes the same mistakes day in and day out. Creating a new AD user is not hard, but when you have an SOP that goes through it step by step and you still fail after five weeks of it? I just think at that point, it's time to part ways.

Deesiel

Iristheangel wrote: »

Any advice or ideas?

</end rant>

Perhaps he never took the MCSE tests because he couldn't grasp the concepts, which could explain why he's struggling with AD.

Sounds like he chose the wrong job for his skill set.

Iristheangel

Hyper-Me wrote: »

The same reason that the CTO at my previous job hired a personal friend and paid him 70k a year out of the gate all while telling me that they had no money to give me a raise on my 40k salary.

Politics.

Dude knew the hiring manager and he got a job, doesnt matter if he can do the job or not. Oh and be careful complaining about him, since he IS the managers friend.

Oh, I've been careful. Trust me! The manager has been calling me into his office every day last week to ask how he's doing and thankfully my supervisor has been backing me up saying that he's just not getting it and seems resistant to any new changes. We're phrasing it nicely though: "Oh, maybe this department isn't the right fit for him but maybe he can get another position within the company?"

Iristheangel

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Inexcuseable.

If you can't keep up with the industry and have your skills match other potential employees than you do not deserve a job.

Agreed. I'm sitting there next to the guy watching him work and here's the average steps he goes through to create an AD account:

1) He'll look through our ticket queue and pick easy tickets. He doesn't know how to scroll down a page so he'll just click the down arrow on the side about a thousand times until he gets to the bottom of the page (he also doesn't seem to know that he can hold it down and it can go a lot fast)
2) He'll then right click, copy the entire request and then right click and paste into Notepad.
3) He'll then go to AD and start the steps to create a new user
4) Instead of typing the name and information for the new user in, he'll search through the 5 page long ticket for the first name, last name, employee ID number, description, office, manager name, role, etc ONE BY ONE right clicking copying/pasting. He NEVER actually uses the keyboard to create the AD account if he can avoid it.
5) Then 30+ minutes later after he's lost himself in all the AD User properties tabs a few dozen times and then gets all the information in, he'll try to add memberships which he'll miss about half because he doesn't look at the SOPS
6) Then he'll forget to put the directory and profile paths into the TSP tab
7) And at LAST an hour later, he'll say he's done!

I've tried to go through it with him and tell him he's NOT allowed to copy and paste, he must print out the ticket and type from what he sees on paper in front of him, he needs to follow the SOPs, etc but this guy just WON'T listen or change. EXTREMELY frustrating that his way takes one hour to do when it takes the rest of us about 10 minutes to create the AD account and add all appropriate memberships

phantasm

Riddle me this, I work with an inidividual who has a CCNA and did NOT know what telnet or SSH was.

Bl8ckr0uter

phantasm wrote: »

Riddle me this, I work with an inidividual who has a CCNA and did NOT know what telnet or SSH was.

knwminus wrote: »

Because most people who use **** are pretty shitty at their jobs

Nuff Said.

jmasterj206

I can relate. I worked with someone with a CCNA who had no idea about VLANs or Spanning Tree.

Hyper-Me

jmasterj206 wrote: »

I can relate. I worked with someone with a CCNA who had no idea about VLANs or Spanning Tree.

Lol. At my previous job our network team refused to use spanning tree because they claimed "it wrecks the network"

Their solution for troubleshooting loops? Unplug each cable in the MDF until the switches start blinking again and then move to the culprit IDF and repeat until you find the drop.

thenjduke

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Lol. At my previous job our network team refused to use spanning tree because they claimed "it wrecks the network"

Their solution for troubleshooting loops? Unplug each cable in the MDF until the switches start blinking again and then move to the culprit IDF and repeat until you find the drop.

Then use RSTP. It is faster. The network team you use to work for did not know the correct way to design STP then. I have never had a problem with it yet.

Devilsbane

knwminus wrote: »

Because most people who use **** are pretty shitty at their jobs

If they have even taken the test at all. It is much too easy to claim knowledge. I wish employers would make a standard practice of requesting transcript ID's.

ipconfig.all

You should talk to him, I mean in I.T if we do not do something for a while we intend to forget it.

Devilsbane

ipconfig.all wrote: »

You should talk to him, I mean in I.T if we do not do something for a while we intend to forget it.

This is completely true. But how long should it take for creating an AD account to come back to you? I'd like to think I could not touch AD for 20 years and still have no problem with making an account, maybe a small refresher of seeing it done once, but then I think I could handle it.

N2IT

Iristheangel wrote: »

Oh, I've been careful. Trust me! The manager has been calling me into his office every day last week to ask how he's doing and thankfully my supervisor has been backing me up saying that he's just not getting it and seems resistant to any new changes. We're phrasing it nicely though: "Oh, maybe this department isn't the right fit for him but maybe he can get another position within the company?"

The easiest way to get rid of the guy is to promote him. Let him be some other teams problem

N2IT

jmasterj206 wrote: »

I can relate. I worked with someone with a CCNA who had no idea about VLANs or Spanning Tree.

Testqueen

Iristheangel

Devilsbane wrote: »

This is completely true. But how long should it take for creating an AD account to come back to you? I'd like to think I could not touch AD for 20 years and still have no problem with making an account, maybe a small refresher of seeing it done once, but then I think I could handle it.

An AD account is pretty damned simple. I taught my girlfriend to create one the other week just because she wanted to learn and she can have one up and running within 5 minutes now. After 5 weeks of practice, even if you've NEVER touched AD before in your life, you should have it down

ipconfig.all

i guess he could be having some other problems so his mind is nit straight at the moment or he caannot backup what ot says on his cv

stlsmoore

Lol there's no way he studied for the MCSE and doesn't know how to touch the easiest topic to grasp on the cert...AD account creation. Even the MCP for XP goes through setting up local accounts and possibly even AD accounts...I don't remember, haven't really touched Microsoft to much every since I've been sent to the depths of the Cisco under world.

tearofs

stlsmoore wrote: »

Lol there's no way he studied for the MCSE and doesn't know how to touch the easiest topic to grasp on the cert...AD account creation. Even the MCP for XP goes through setting up local accounts and possibly even AD accounts...I don't remember, haven't really touched Microsoft to much every since I've been sent to the depths of the Cisco under world.

Becareful, Cisco WILL indeed corrupt your mind

To be honest with you, I am studying MCSE atm and I think those topics are boooooooooooooring compare to CCNA.

Michael.J.Palmer

stlsmoore wrote: »

Lol there's no way he studied for the MCSE and doesn't know how to touch the easiest topic to grasp on the cert...AD account creation. Even the MCP for XP goes through setting up local accounts and possibly even AD accounts...I don't remember, haven't really touched Microsoft to much every since I've been sent to the depths of the Cisco under world.

Can't quite remember if it covered the creation of AD accounts, but creating AD accounts is basically the same as creating local accounts on a computer through Computer Management that anyone with that knowledge should be able to at the very least figure out quickly how to add users to an AD.

Hyper-Me wrote:

Inexcuseable.

If you can't keep up with the industry and have your skills match other potential employees than you do not deserve a job.

Oh I whole heartedly agree with you on this, I was just simply trying to make sense on why someone would be that brain dead of a position that looks to require only basic knowledge of how an AD works. And as far as the paper cert comments being thrown around, I agree with those as well, but this guy is even worse than most of those as he's got at least a decade of experience working in the field, at least most paper certs at that point should have a basic knowledge of how things work.

Mojo_666

Iristheangel wrote: »

I work in the access provisioning department where we create and modify network access all day long. AD has a big part in our job (creating users, thin clients, etc) as well as Citrix, Meditech, etc access.

Recently my manager hired on this guy who has 10+ years of IT experience, a CCNA, and supposedly studied for the CCNP and MCSE but just never took the test. According to my manager, they used to work together 5 years ago and this guy was a great employee (I guess he dealt with networking and troubleshooting at that job). Well... I've been training this guy for 5 weeks now and he still can't understand how to use AD, can't navigated around an account creation, can't figure out shortcut keys (we're talking ctrl-c, ctrl-v. The guy literally highlights a word, right clicks, copies, then moves to the other screen, right clicks, pastes, etc at the speed of a crippled snail), doesn't seem to be catching on and learning anything, types less than 20 WPM when he does type, can't figure out how to create accounts in other systems, simple concepts escape him, etc. This guy has been there for 5 weeks now and has been processing 4-6 requests a day while the rest of my department is in the 30-50 a day range.

I'm curious, but how does this happen? Did the guy have skills before and just got rusty after being unemployed for a year and a half? Isn't he supposed to catch on after 5 weeks? People on their first day get more tickets done. I'm just perplexed... I would say this guy BSed on his resume, but according to the boss, he used to have a great work ethic and new how to get things done on his resume. Just frustrated. I have to train this guy and I've been trying but it's not going forward at all. I would think someone with a CCNA and who studied even for just the 70-290 would have no problem doing this job.

Any advice or ideas?

</end rant>

This guy sounds really dodgy, I would be inclined to try the "give them enough rope to hang themselves" and pray that they do so before the probation period ends.

Devilsbane

Mojo_666 wrote: »

This guy sounds really dodgy, I would be inclined to try the "give them enough rope to hang themselves" and pray that they do so before the probation period ends.

It is a fine line though. If you just let him fail, the finger could come pointing back at you for not training him well enough. (Even though your job shouldn't be to train him on the things he claims to have known.)It is a pretty sticky situation with him being the bosses friend. Might just be one of those things that you have to live with, very unfortunate when there are plenty of people out there with the skills who are unemployed.

I think the only thing you can do is speak with your boss. But be very careful with your wording.

subl1m1nal

If he doesn't even have an MCP, chances are he doesn't know AD. I didn't realize "studying" can go on a resume. I took CCNA classes, and I could get around if needed, but you don't see me putting CCNA expert on my resume for a few classes I took.

If you question his CCNA, call a testing center to verify his credentials. At my last job, there was a guy who claimed to have MCSE, the bosses got suspicious when he didn't know his stuff and called the testing center to verify his MCSE. Turns out he didn't even have it, and they canned him.

If I were his bosses, I'd set a timeline to get MCP, MCSA, and MCSE (if even required). Tell him to get certified or get out. Creating an account in AD isn't rocket science, especially if you setup some template accounts to copy.

tpatt100

I haven't done AD work in a few years until recently but nothing huge changed between my 2003 to 2008 Server besides Microsoft moving some stuff around but eventually I got the hang of it again after reading through a Microsoft Press book.

I think he might have been at a higher level for a while and forgot how to do the low level things.

Word of advice? If he is a friend of your manager take him under your wing and he will end up needing you. That way you can make him an asset.

I did this to help me get off the heldpesk a long time ago. I had a coworker who was great with management but lacked in IT. He brought me everywhere to help him and I got exposure that way when they realized he was dumb as a rock and I took the projects over.

Devilsbane

subl1m1nal wrote: »

If you question his CCNA, call a testing center to verify his credentials. At my last job, there was a guy who claimed to have MCSE, the bosses got suspicious when he didn't know his stuff and called the testing center to verify his MCSE. Turns out he didn't even have it, and they canned him.

It isn't that easy anymore. In the past you could easily verify certifications, but with privacy concerns now, you can't just call up and ask questions about people. You could request that he provide the information to you, but as he has already been hired and it was not one of the terms of his being hired, I think that he could refuse and if you fired him it would be wrongful termination. Not entirely sure on that, but he could make a good case.

Cherper

Well to be somewhat fair, if you threw me into a situation where I was having to deal with AD on a daily basis I would be in trouble for a while. I haven't played with AD since 2K. I do nothing but routers and switches.

I think what the problem is here is the whole "who you know." Maybe he was in a position before that really didn't require anything from him. He shined there because he couldn't fail. The hiring manager saw that and not knowing that the position was a no-brainer thought he was excellent. Now that he is in a position that requires more that keeping a chair warm, he is struggling.

Also, studies have shown that those who have been unemployed for a lengthy period of time have a difficult time adapting to working again. It could be that, but after 5 weeks, I doubt it.

loxleynew

Iristheangel wrote: »

To answer your question, I believe he was a network technician at his previous place of employment. He was also out of work for about a year and a half. I'm just really taken aback by how slow he is with a computer as well as how incapable he is when it comes to learning anything new. Not only that, but we have SOPs for him to use which details everything he needs to do STEP by STEP with screenshots. Anyways, I've been recommending for my manager to let him go because he's shown absolutely no improvement in 5 weeks and no matter how many times I tell him the same thing, he makes the same mistakes day in and day out. Creating a new AD user is not hard, but when you have an SOP that goes through it step by step and you still fail after five weeks of it? I just think at that point, it's time to part ways.

IS generally one ticket like creating an AD user? So basically he can create 4-6 users in one day?

I mean it should only take like what maybe 10 minutes max to create a user and that includes adding them to groups and giving them access to things.