Fewer than 50 percent said they were satisfied with their current IT staff.

I found this today.

A tandem survey of business-unit managers found that only 39 percent thought the IT staff could regularly deliver projects on time and on budget.
Fewer than 50 percent said they were satisfied with their current IT staff.

Most of the problems come from management and the bean counters. They don't want to spend the money and they wait till the last minute to ok the project.

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Comments

emerald_octane

Some of my users hate our group because we deny outrageous requests (such as one for a 30 inch Apple Thunderbolt Cinema Display, in an organization that regularly hands out the 21" inch VGA viewsonics). Even though we have a low time to first response , low MTTR , follow up regularly and 99.999% network availability

petedude

To some degree it's about perception, but it also goes back to how well the I/T function engages other departments (aka "the business").

If the I/T department offers poor "customer service" (lackluster interaction with its user base), poor follow-through/follow-up and of course not being in touch with the other departments' needs (real and/or perceived) the I/T function should not be surprised to get poor opinion ratings.

shodown

As a consultant I can see this being true. When I deploy systems. I would say 50 percent of the IT staff is overworked and expected to be "great" at too many things. I did a deployment not to long ago at a company and they expected there Desktop Support staff to have high level VoIP experience, on top of keeping all the PC's up, doing email, SQL, Storage and do on. That is a unrealistic expectation of management which leads to customer sat issues. The other 25 percent of IT staff just flat out suck. The company doesn't want to pay for Top Tier IT staff even though there organization has grown to that size. I did some consulting work for a large equipment company and they made a killing during the recession and they went from 3 site with 1 call manager to over 50 sites with multiple phone system and users. They still expected the current VoIP guy to be able to handle that load. Global call centers, Gatekeepers, the works. They were paying this guy 65K and expecting him to have the skill of a 100K+ engineer. Just not possible. I'm not sure where the other 25 percent fall in.

RouteMyPacket

Problem is there is a massive infestation of garbage "IT Pros" working in the field. Mostly they hide in Enterprises but I would dare say a good 75% of IT Sys Admins/Net Admins are clueless hacks.

I come across people constantly that baffle me as to how they even landed the job. Laziness and incompetence are overwhelming.

I would agree in one aspect that the "IT Generalist" role is expected but is all but dead..technology is too complex these days for someone to truly grasp everything from Sys/VM/Storage/Route/Switch/Voice...I've been there and I got sick of being a "jack of all trades, master of none".

paul78

Got link? Sounds like marketing hype from some consulting company. All I found is a random Slashdot article without and citing of the purported survey.

cisco_trooper

It doesn't help when projects are scoped by people who don't understand the technology. You've got PMs putting together arbitrary timelines that are little better than just made up. systems integration does not lend itself well to traditional project management. systems integration is not the same a building a bridge. with a bridge you know how long it needs to be, where it is going. systems integration is rarely that easy. enterprises never know how dug in their systems are until they try to rip one out and it breaks literally everything. they then wonder why it takes so darn long to replace that system. they have no grasp of the complexity, scope, planning, skillsets, and manpower required for a full scale systems integration project to happen in a reasonable amount of time without breaking something or disturbing end users. i'm honestly surprised even 39% are satisfied. those are the 39% who have projects helpdesk people perform. replacing workstations and monitors.

jmritenour

Working for a MSP, that doesn't surprise me. I am often appalled at how incompetent some customers' IT staff is when I have to interface with them.

Going through a command history one one RHEL 4 box, I saw this little gem.

chmod 0777 / -R

One of their admins - verified it was them through logs - made everything world writable recursively starting at root. And it was a internet facing web server. Needless to say, this server was beyond F'ed up - we had to rebuild it.

I've also worked with my share of people that were far less technically inclined than their position demanded. I will say, most of those people offset that with exceptional soft skills.

W Stewart

^^^ lol I've seen people make files world writable but that one takes the cake. Pretty sure ssh keys and a lot of other stuff like suexec won't even work with those permissions.

coffeeluvr

@jmritenour..."Going through a command history one one RHEL 4 box, I saw this little gem.

chmod 0777 / -R".......I almost spit my coffee out when I read this....

YFZblu

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

Problem is there is a massive infestation of garbage "IT Pros" working in the field. Mostly they hide in Enterprises but I would dare say a good 75% of IT Sys Admins/Net Admins are clueless hacks.

This, exactly this.

cisco_trooper

Repped for the chmod bit. That's ridiculous. Keep 'em coming. I regularly come across firewalls that are wide open. I see web facing servers with a permit ip any on that server's ruleset. There's never any protocol compliance checking, or minimization of services such as FTP. Everything is always just wide open. That is until I come along. lol.

markulous

cisco_trooper wrote: »

Repped for the chmod bit. That's ridiculous. Keep 'em coming. I regularly come across firewalls that are wide open. I see web facing servers with a permit ip any on that server's ruleset. There's never any protocol compliance checking, or minimization of services such as FTP. Everything is always just wide open. That is until I come along. lol.

I was just at a job that was similar to that. I was able to go onto FTP sites from any workstation and download anything from there. I wasn't working in their IT department but it seemed rather lax.

cisco_trooper

Yep, no egress filtering at all. But also for their web facing servers, not reducing the attack surface of exposed protocols.

SteveLord

I would be considered a JOAT or generalist. I have no problem being up front and honest when dealing with subject matter experts. Letting them do their thing and taking notes when I can.

onesaint

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

Problem is there is a massive infestation of garbage "IT Pros" working in the field. Mostly they hide in Enterprises but I would dare say a good 75% of IT Sys Admins/Net Admins are clueless hacks.

I come across people constantly that baffle me as to how they even landed the job. Laziness and incompetence are overwhelming.

I see this too. I think it's a function of Management making bad calls. Folks come in who can sell themselves well but, when push comes to shove, they don't know, nor can do anything except talk a good game.

But, perception is everything, I'm told.

olaHalo

IMO its hard for companies to quantify the value of IT work.
So they pay less than they probably should and get mediocre IT staff.

My team is a skeleton crew and most guys locally here have told me they work understaffed too.
We have a secretary answering help desk calls. She is asked to troubleshoot the best she can and if she cant then forward them to the desktop guys.
Its nuts

instant000

olaHalo:

I believe that it is easy for companies to quantify the value of IT work. In many cases, that value is low.

You can make your end users happier when you can create something to make their job easier. Also, end users appreciate training that makes them more effective in their work.

A lot of IT work is maintenance-style, and reactionary. I would suggest going for end user training initiatives, whereby you work with departments, figure out what the end users are doing, and then train them on more efficient ways of doing their work. In manufacturing, they call it LEAN transformation. Sys admins call it common sense.

For example: You have to work with Ken. While working with Ken, you notice that his phone is ringing off the hook. He complains that he is so busy with doing reports and moving files around, he cannot put as much time as he needs into customer relations. He is thinking he might have to hire another person to answer the phones.

End user Ken is observed browsing through 20 levels of folders to get to something, over and over again during your observation. He then copies a file to a folder. You realize that Ken is really just copying a certain file to a certain location. You believe that a script can perform that action. You investigate, and realize that he is just using that to pull raw data from the ERP to run a data analysis within excel. You double-check, and there is already a feature within the ERP that can create this report for him. You just saved Ken about 30 minutes of work per day.

You then see that Ken is handling two windows at once, one window to look at a tracking system, and one window to look at an ordering system. You see Ken repeatedly switching windows back and forth. You then suggest that Ken either place the windows side-by-side, or get an additional monitor. Further investigation reveals that there is a module within the application that provides the comparison functionality that Ken is looking for. You show this module to Ken, so that his job is easier.

You then observe Ken running 20 different reports with some very particular formattings. He then sends those reports to his boss. You suggest that Ken just have those as scheduled jobs that produce the pre-defined reports and send him the result. Of course, you dig further, and ask him what the reports are for, what the informaton is used for, etc. You ask Ken some questions, trying to get to the bottom of what he really needs. After thoroughly analyzing, you realize that Ken can provide his boss all the information he needs in just two reports: 1 for summary, and another for detail. This is all the information the boss needs for making strategic decisions for the customer accounts. You then make the boss's job easier, by having this information appear in a dashboard in the ERP. This saves Ken about 3.5 hours each day.

You've now freed up four hours of Ken's time to deal with customers.

As you leave to go back to your department, Ken stops you. He asks if you can help Barbie tomorrow.

W Stewart

jmritenour wrote: »

Working for a MSP, that doesn't surprise me. I am often appalled at how incompetent some customers' IT staff is when I have to interface with them.

Going through a command history one one RHEL 4 box, I saw this little gem.

chmod 0777 / -R

One of their admins - verified it was them through logs - made everything world writable recursively starting at root. And it was a internet facing web server. Needless to say, this server was beyond F'ed up - we had to rebuild it.

I've also worked with my share of people that were far less technically inclined than their position demanded. I will say, most of those people offset that with exceptional soft skills.

chmod 0777 / -R == god mode

it_consultant

instant000 wrote: »

olaHalo:

I believe that it is easy for companies to quantify the value of IT work. In many cases, that value is low.

You can make your end users happier when you can create something to make their job easier. Also, end users appreciate training that makes them more effective in their work.

A lot of IT work is maintenance-style, and reactionary. I would suggest going for end user training initiatives, whereby you work with departments, figure out what the end users are doing, and then train them on more efficient ways of doing their work. In manufacturing, they call it LEAN transformation. Sys admins call it common sense.

For example: You have to work with Ken. While working with Ken, you notice that his phone is ringing off the hook. He complains that he is so busy with doing reports and moving files around, he cannot put as much time as he needs into customer relations. He is thinking he might have to hire another person to answer the phones.

End user Ken is observed browsing through 20 levels of folders to get to something, over and over again during your observation. He then copies a file to a folder. You realize that Ken is really just copying a certain file to a certain location. You believe that a script can perform that action. You investigate, and realize that he is just using that to pull raw data from the ERP to run a data analysis within excel. You double-check, and there is already a feature within the ERP that can create this report for him. You just saved Ken about 30 minutes of work per day.

You then see that Ken is handling two windows at once, one window to look at a tracking system, and one window to look at an ordering system. You see Ken repeatedly switching windows back and forth. You then suggest that Ken either place the windows side-by-side, or get an additional monitor. Further investigation reveals that there is a module within the application that provides the comparison functionality that Ken is looking for. You show this module to Ken, so that his job is easier.

You then observe Ken running 20 different reports with some very particular formattings. He then sends those reports to his boss. You suggest that Ken just have those as scheduled jobs that produce the pre-defined reports and send him the result. Of course, you dig further, and ask him what the reports are for, what the informaton is used for, etc. You ask Ken some questions, trying to get to the bottom of what he really needs. After thoroughly analyzing, you realize that Ken can provide his boss all the information he needs in just two reports: 1 for summary, and another for detail. This is all the information the boss needs for making strategic decisions for the customer accounts. You then make the boss's job easier, by having this information appear in a dashboard in the ERP. This saves Ken about 3.5 hours each day.

You've now freed up four hours of Ken's time to deal with customers.

As you leave to go back to your department, Ken stops you. He asks if you can help Barbie tomorrow.

Originally, when I started reading this thread, I was going to spout off (like some have) that most IT people are bad; a sentiment I largely agree with. Then I read this post and I think that besides the general poor quality of the IT professional; the real problem is that no one seems to know how to integrate IT into the business as a unit. Many times it is the business and then there are these IT guys sitting around like highly paid leeches. I saw this consistently in my consulting days, even when the IT staff was quite good there was a general distrust and suspicion about IT people. Management is generally confounded by us and for good reason, we are not your typical employee, in many ways we are functionally better than average at our jobs and more honest than most but we are too outwardly obvious about our disdain for incompetence and either real or perceived stupidity. I have made some observations working in this field:

1 - We do not play politics well and do not respect people who do. We see the only quantifiable measure of an employees worth is their skill level and productivity. Since people who play politics well usually end up in management positions; the results are obvious.

2 - We are honest, detail oriented, and tend to be pedantic. We won't steer you wrong if you are patient enough to deal with us.

3 - We are arrogant; memorizing details of things that no one cares about will do that to you. We do a bad job of hiding our inherent doubt that anyone other than a science or technically trained employee is at our level of intelligence.

4 - We don't barter or negotiate. There is a right way of doing things and anything other than that meets our scorn, no matter the implications to us or other departments.

5 - In order for a non-technical person to understand what our skills are to the point where they can accurately judge our effectiveness; it would take days of instruction starting at "this is what an operating system is". Few people outside of technical sciences will bother.

Most of the blame lies with management because ultimately it is there responsibility to make sure the company is functioning cohesively, we have a responsibility as well to become more business-savvy and dare I say - more mainstream and normal.

petedude

jmritenour wrote: »

I've also worked with my share of people that were far less technically inclined than their position demanded. I will say, most of those people offset that with exceptional soft skills.

I don't doubt the value of soft skills, but I've seen people try to skate by almost just on those. I know of one IT employee who can work on lots of rote support/help desk tasks and repair hardware, but refuses to complete any foundational coursework or certification. If this person ends up a lone sysadmin someplace, all bets are off.

instant000

it_consultant wrote: »

we have a responsibility ... to become more business-savvy

+1 Alert!

linuxabuser

it_consultant wrote: »

Originally, when I started reading this thread, I was going to spout off (like some have) that most IT people are bad; a sentiment I largely agree with. Then I read this post and I think that besides the general poor quality of the IT professional; the real problem is that no one seems to know how to integrate IT into the business as a unit. Many times it is the business and then there are these IT guys sitting around like highly paid leeches. I saw this consistently in my consulting days, even when the IT staff was quite good there was a general distrust and suspicion about IT people. Management is generally confounded by us and for good reason, we are not your typical employee, in many ways we are functionally better than average at our jobs and more honest than most but we are too outwardly obvious about our disdain for incompetence and either real or perceived stupidity. I have made some observations working in this field:

1 - We do not play politics well and do not respect people who do. We see the only quantifiable measure of an employees worth is their skill level and productivity. Since people who play politics well usually end up in management positions; the results are obvious.

2 - We are honest, detail oriented, and tend to be pedantic. We won't steer you wrong if you are patient enough to deal with us.

3 - We are arrogant; memorizing details of things that no one cares about will do that to you. We do a bad job of hiding our inherent doubt that anyone other than a science or technically trained employee is at our level of intelligence.

4 - We don't barter or negotiate. There is a right way of doing things and anything other than that meets our scorn, no matter the implications to us or other departments.

5 - In order for a non-technical person to understand what our skills are to the point where they can accurately judge our effectiveness; it would take days of instruction starting at "this is what an operating system is". Few people outside of technical sciences will bother.

Most of the blame lies with management because ultimately it is there responsibility to make sure the company is functioning cohesively, we have a responsibility as well to become more business-savvy and dare I say - more mainstream and normal.

What a great post; thanks for this.

I work in a small-ish "family-operated" bank. Politics are literally everything - parking spaces are controlled by the President's 50-something year old daughter. The HR department just covers their eyes to all of the workplace toxicity because "the family does it, it must be ok".

Things like this piss me off to no end, but I'm trying to ignore it. I'll give myself another 6 - 8 months or so to GTFO. I don't function well in environments like this.

phonic

linuxabuser wrote: »

What a great post; thanks for this.

I work in a small-ish "family-operated" bank. Politics are literally everything - parking spaces are controlled by the President's 50-something year old daughter. The HR department just covers their eyes to all of the workplace toxicity because "the family does it, it must be ok".

Things like this piss me off to no end, but I'm trying to ignore it. I'll give myself another 6 - 8 months or so to GTFO. I don't function well in environments like this.

Working in any type of small "family business" can be quite challenging and difficult if you aren't a member of that family. Not only are many labor laws and standard HR policies often ignored, but it can also be next to impossible to move up in the organization based solely on merit and quality of work. Add in the likelihood of family fighting and drama, and I agree that your best bet is to find a better employer.

Zartanasaurus

Compare that to the what they think of their HR, Finance or Facilities Maintenance staff.

jmritenour

W Stewart wrote: »

^^^ lol I've seen people make files world writable but that one takes the cake. Pretty sure ssh keys and a lot of other stuff like suexec won't even work with those permissions.

Yep, that was what tipped us off initially - they submitted a ticket saying all of a sudden their SSH keys weren't working, and a several services weren't starting after a reboot. It was an absolute mess.

jibbajabba

I wonder how many staff are satisfied with their company

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

technology is too complex these days for someone to truly grasp everything from Sys/VM/Storage/Route/Switch/Voice...I've been there and I got sick of being a "jack of all trades, master of none".

SO true ...

apr911

it_consultant wrote: »

Originally, when I started reading this thread, I was going to spout off (like some have) that most IT people are bad; a sentiment I largely agree with. Then I read this post and I think that besides the general poor quality of the IT professional; the real problem is that no one seems to know how to integrate IT into the business as a unit. Many times it is the business and then there are these IT guys sitting around like highly paid leeches. I saw this consistently in my consulting days, even when the IT staff was quite good there was a general distrust and suspicion about IT people. Management is generally confounded by us and for good reason, we are not your typical employee, in many ways we are functionally better than average at our jobs and more honest than most but we are too outwardly obvious about our disdain for incompetence and either real or perceived stupidity. I have made some observations working in this field:

1 - We do not play politics well and do not respect people who do. We see the only quantifiable measure of an employees worth is their skill level and productivity. Since people who play politics well usually end up in management positions; the results are obvious.

2 - We are honest, detail oriented, and tend to be pedantic. We won't steer you wrong if you are patient enough to deal with us.

3 - We are arrogant; memorizing details of things that no one cares about will do that to you. We do a bad job of hiding our inherent doubt that anyone other than a science or technically trained employee is at our level of intelligence.

4 - We don't barter or negotiate. There is a right way of doing things and anything other than that meets our scorn, no matter the implications to us or other departments.

5 - In order for a non-technical person to understand what our skills are to the point where they can accurately judge our effectiveness; it would take days of instruction starting at "this is what an operating system is". Few people outside of technical sciences will bother.

Most of the blame lies with management because ultimately it is there responsibility to make sure the company is functioning cohesively, we have a responsibility as well to become more business-savvy and dare I say - more mainstream and normal.

+1

The best article Ive ever read on why Well-Functioning IT Departments devolve into a mess:

Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks - Computerworld

tier~

apr911 wrote: »

+1

The best article Ive ever read on why Well-Functioning IT Departments devolve into a mess:

Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks - Computerworld

That's an awesome synopsis that I will definitely be sharing with a few people.

CompuTron99

shodown wrote: »

I did a deployment not to long ago at a company and they expected there Desktop Support staff to have high level VoIP experience, on top of keeping all the PC's up, doing email, SQL, Storage and do on.

Were you at my company? haha. +1

networker050184

I'd venture a guess that less than 50% of people are satisfied with anything you ask them about.....