Letting off a little steam

Hey guys,

I've been working in a company for a little over a year now and seem to get very little respect; I'm seen as just being the IT Guy.

Recently there was lay-offs and some of the secretaries have made comments like why does the IT Guy still have his job, it really makes me wonder why I bother with all my T&D and keeping the servers and computers up and running.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

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Webmaster

Sounds familiar, not only from my own experience but dozens of ex-co-workers as well. That's how it often goes. If the system doesn't work, you are to blame, and if it does work, you don't get a pat on the shoulder. It's one of the reasons I prefer working at large companies only, those with a large IT 'departement'.

Look at it this way: you can't expect a secretary to really understand or value anything of the sophisticated things we IT folks do.

If the company isn't going very well and you feel unappreciated you may want to start looking for another job or at least keep your eyes open for other opportunities.

strauchr

I know that feeling really well!

I try to focus on positives such as how I do manage to keep networks running well to the point people never complain about them (well almost never) and how when you do manage to do that magic us IT professionals do some people actually do appreciate us every now and then and they show it through nice compliments such as "your a life saver"

I too get down about the lack of respect my career gets but I try to remain positive and remember that any one of my critics couldn't my job if their life depended on it.

And yes, we are professionals dammit, not IT guys!

/usr

Unfortunately, most end users think "it should just work." We get little, if any, credit for making the things work, yet we're always somehow at fault when they go wrong...

I still haven't figured it out.

viper75

Users have no clue what we have to go through to keep their production up. They think that everything works like magic but we all know that's not true. I've been at my company for 6 years now and when a user complains about having problems sending an email from the company to a friend outside the company I let them know.

1) Don't come telling me that there's a problem with our email servers when in reality you're the one mis-typing the email address.

2) Don't come and tell me there's a problem with the network when you're the one mis-typing your login password.

People just don't get it!!! Everything is your fault when something is wrong and no one tells you "great job" for keeping the network running smooth.

Sometimes I just want to cause havoc to show the users that IT needs more respect.

Drakonblayde

Do not try the patience of sysadmins, for they are subtle and quick to anger

/usr

The best is when they email you to fix the problem they are having logging in (they forgot their password), but they copy the upper level managers on the email as well, as if you ignore them when this happens the other 2 times a week.

hhisgett

/usr wrote:

The best is when they email you to fix the problem they are having logging in (they forgot their password), but they copy the upper level managers on the email as well, as if you ignore them when this happens the other 2 times a week.

Oh..there is nothing that burns me up more.

Drakonblayde

And they know it, that's why they do it.

But you can be creative and get back at them.

One friend of mine worked for a law firm's IT support. One user constantly pissed him off with her unrealistic expectations.

Company policy dictated that all documents needed to be saved to the doc management system, and all personal files should be stored on your network drive. Nothing should have been stored on the local disk. Well, this user had a bad habit of saving stuff to her local My Documents folder (it wasn't being redirected to a file share, and I rather suspect that was being done on purpose).

Well, one day, her My Documents folder was.... empty. And since it was published company policy to not save anything local, well she could hardly come down on IT, now could she? I understand the tongue lashing from her boss was quite.... thorough.

The moral of the story: Be very very nice to the people with the administrative passwords if you value your data.

viper75

/usr wrote:

The best is when they email you to fix the problem they are having logging in (they forgot their password), but they copy the upper level managers on the email as well, as if you ignore them when this happens the other 2 times a week.

Man I hate when they do crap like that. When they start to do that and cc: the whole world what I usually do is email back the user along with all the people they decided to cc: to let them know that it was their mistake not IT's. That way they know that IT will not tolerate crap from the local user.

viper75

Drakonblayde wrote:

And they know it, that's why they do it.

But you can be creative and get back at them.

One friend of mine worked for a law firm's IT support. One user constantly pissed him off with her unrealistic expectations.

Company policy dictated that all documents needed to be saved to the doc management system, and all personal files should be stored on your network drive. Nothing should have been stored on the local disk. Well, this user had a bad habit of saving stuff to her local My Documents folder (it wasn't being redirected to a file share, and I rather suspect that was being done on purpose).

Well, one day, her My Documents folder was.... empty. And since it was published company policy to not save anything local, well she could hardly come down on IT, now could she? I understand the tongue lashing from her boss was quite.... thorough.

The moral of the story: Be very very nice to the people with the administrative passwords if you value your data.

That's the samething we do here. We tell the users to save all their documents onto the network drive not the local drive so if the HD crashes their data is not lost. But do they listen??? no!!! My boss has sent company wide emails telling the users to save to the network drive and memos have also been sent out.

Two weeks ago 2 HD's crashed and guess what the two users lost their data and guess what else they did not save anything to the network drive. All their data was lost!!! They were begging me to try to recover the data which I honestly tried but the drives were shot and was not able to get nothing. Like I said before...they never listen!!!

Drakonblayde

I've gotten to the point where, when I'm managing a network now, I treat the users as if they're dumb children. Because that's basically what they are. I will redirect everything I can to the RAID5, and whatever I can't, I'll put together a crude vbscript to force it on login. I take away all the sharp and pointy objects that the users can hurt themselves with (in other words, I cripple the bloody hell out of IE), and I even put BIOS passwords on their boxes so that users who decide they think they know more than me try to boot something they shouldn't can't do it.

For one of my larger clients, I'm trying to get the to cough up the money for the licenses for 2k server in TS Application Server mode. If I could force them to do their real work on the terminal server and basicallt turn their PC's into thin clients, it would make my life *SO* much easier.

It's just a given fact that users will always be the bane of any system administrator, no matter how hard you try to educate them, no matter how many times you tell them something, they still think they know better than you do until they have to come crying to you for a restore.

And people wonder why I want to go into network engineering. If I wanted to spend my day babysitting instead of being a nerd, I'd be working daycare.

garv221

Drakonblayde wrote:

I've gotten to the point where, when I'm managing a network now, I treat the users as if they're dumb children. Because that's basically what they are. I will redirect everything I can to the RAID5, and whatever I can't, I'll put together a crude vbscript to force it on login. I take away all the sharp and pointy objects that the users can hurt themselves with (in other words, I cripple the bloody hell out of IE), and I even put BIOS passwords on their boxes so that users who decide they think they know more than me try to boot something they shouldn't can't do it.

For one of my larger clients, I'm trying to get the to cough up the money for the licenses for 2k server in TS Application Server mode. If I could force them to do their real work on the terminal server and basicallt turn their PC's into thin clients, it would make my life *SO* much easier.

It's just a given fact that users will always be the bane of any system administrator, no matter how hard you try to educate them, no matter how many times you tell them something, they still think they know better than you do until they have to come crying to you for a restore.

And people wonder why I want to go into network engineering. If I wanted to spend my day babysitting instead of being a nerd, I'd be working daycare.

I like your style. I'm a Systems Administrator also, I'm going to get out of it also. I want to setup software & networks but not help out users.

viper75

garv221 wrote:

I like your style. I'm a Systems Administrator also, I'm going to get out of it also. I want to setup software & networks but not help out users.

Yeah...I'm heading that direction too. Don't want to deal with anymore babies.

/usr

Well, one day, her My Documents folder was.... empty.

shell_e

I guess Im lucky, my users think Im a God because I can map a drive or install Spybot .. They wouldnt have a clue about any of the "meat and potatoes" stuff I do around here.... all smoke and mirrors to them..I think I like that way too..

RussS

/usr wrote:

The best is when they email you to fix the problem they are having logging in (they forgot their password), but they copy the upper level managers on the email as well, as if you ignore them when this happens the other 2 times a week.

The quick fix for that is to reply to them - quoting the past 2 times this week they forgot their password. Not forgetting to let that upper level manager to get a copy just to let him know you are on the ball

However people - for all the bitching and griping about how users are a pain in the butt. REMEMBER, without users we don't have jobs

viper75

I always do that...let upper-management know that I'm on top of things just to cover my back. For example....one office here has a Laserjet printer connected to a fiber port. Within a week I got two calls saying that the printer is not printing from any workstation and they decided to cc: the whole world on it. Well the problem was that the users had broke the fiber cable twice therefore taking the laserjet offline. Well after that email I decided to email the whole world back to tell them that I have already replaced the fiber cable twice within a week and also mentioned that I had already warned the users 2x not do near the fiber drop because someone could break the cable. After that the higher levels got intouch with the users telling them that this was the last time the fiber cable will be replaced.

Yes, very true the reason why we have jobs is because of the users but, we as IT Prof. need to share our stories with eachother...good or bad.

garv221

RussS wrote:

/usr wrote:

The best is when they email you to fix the problem they are having logging in (they forgot their password), but they copy the upper level managers on the email as well, as if you ignore them when this happens the other 2 times a week.

The quick fix for that is to reply to them - quoting the past 2 times this week they forgot their password. Not forgetting to let that upper level manager to get a copy just to let him know you are on the ball

However people - for all the bitching and griping about how users are a pain in the butt. REMEMBER, without users we don't have jobs

Without any users I wouldn't have gotten into this field. I wish there were never any users.

Drakonblayde

Yeah, without users, there wouldn't be any jobs, but I'm in a rather unique situation. I have my fulltime job, but I also manage networks for a few real estate clients. It's not a fulltime job, but they pay me a monthly retainer to check in and keep everything running fine. I've got it setup that I can do that remotely, takes maybe an hour per network to make sure everything is running fine, and I do it weekly just to stay on top of things. If they have a problem that needs to be addressed right away, as long as they have network access, I just have 'em startup WinVNC and I remote in and take a look. It's very rare that I actually have to make a house call anymore. I give them 20 hours a month for the retainer, and anything over that I bill at my regular rate.

So I prefer it when things run smoothly

All those users understand that as far as they're concerned, I'm God. And I'm not a good person to make mad, since the people who are actually paying me absolutely *love* me and take what I have to say seriously.

The only time I run into any real problems are when a new administrative assistant or a new agent shows up. They usually take a few weeks to figure things out, and in the meantime they assume that just because there's a number for the 'Computer Guy', I'm an on call 24/7 help desk for their every little problem. They tend to figure out quite quick that it's a good idea to ask around the office first if they're having a problem, as if it's not an issue with the hardware or an installed application, I don't want to hear about it. I'm not a trainer, I'm not a help desk, I'm the sys/network admin. And if I didn't take any crap when I *was* working helpdesk for various law firms, I'm sure not gonna take any from a mere real estate agent.

I think the worst problem I've had to deal with was when one of the agents was bringing her kid to the office. And the kid had a bad habit of installing AIM and clicking YES on every single prompt that came up on a website. And worse, the kid liked to login to *everyones* computer. Doing a full spyware sweep and kill on 39 boxes kind of messed with my weekend. The following Monday I paid a personal visit to the office, and explained to everyone there that if they couldn't control their kids (and keep their bloody passwords secret), the accounts in question were going to be disabled for at least a week, and I didn't care how much work they needed to get done, they could take it home and do it on their spyware infected piece of crap. And I made it very clear that if that measure proved ineffective, they could find themselves a new administrator. Problem never happened again.

I guess respect is a matter of how you present yourself. If I'm responsible for a box, I take it seriously. And before I accept that kind of responsibility, I make certain I have carte blanche from whoever happens to be in charge. Of course the fact that I'm 6'3" and have a pretty intimidating glare probably helps make users think twice about wasting my time. They know that if they have a legit problem, it's ok, and I will fix it as soon as I can. And they make the occasional mistake about what's a legit problem and what isn't. But they never make the same mistake twice

Zraxniah

From a desktop technician standpoint, and almost never having the support of anyone above me -- I'm sick of everyone including the sysadmins and managers, but then again, I hate where I work. You've got the GOD OF NETWORKS (Mr. Cisco) who doesn't test anything and blames you when it doesn't work, the managers that don't dicipline thier techs or phone reps (or enforce policies), and your sysadmins that give no consideration to the desktop support aspect (allowing users to save to C, etc).

Bah, i needa new job

KernelXP

Zraxniah wrote:

From a desktop technician standpoint, and almost never having the support of anyone above me -- I'm sick of everyone including the sysadmins and managers, but then again, I hate where I work. You've got the GOD OF NETWORKS (Mr. Cisco) who doesn't test anything and blames you when it doesn't work, the managers that don't dicipline thier techs or phone reps (or enforce policies), and your sysadmins that give no consideration to the desktop support aspect (allowing users to save to C, etc).

Bah, i needa new job

I feel your pain, when my contract ends I'll be looking for another job.

/usr

the GOD OF NETWORKS (Mr. Cisco)