How to Enjoy a Better Corporate IT Experience

[KatyMan]

Inspired by this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5416136

This is a tongue in cheek response (and hopefully not offensive to the original post), but what if everyone wrote some rules for how to deal with people in their profession?

As a person who spent about fifteen years in corporate IT, I'd like to suggest a few things that will help you enjoy your IT experience without losing data.

1. You will be helped by an analyst or an engineer. Please understand that this does not mean they are a servant. Treat them like humans. They are the link between you getting your work done and getting a good evaluation. Think about that for a minute before being arrogant, condescending or acting like you are entitled to a crown. These are the people who stand between whether your brief gets filed on time, your engineering drawing is accurate, or your time card gets processed. Be nice, and they will almost certainly be nice as well. If you're not nice, you may find paragraphs missing from that brief, or measurements changed on that drawing, or your time card zeroed out.

2. Understand that sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes its the fault of the analyst/engineer. Usually it's not. Networks get busy, routers go down, servers crash...mistakes happen. You're the customer, you have a right to be satisfied. You do not have the right to be abusive and, as in almost all things, you will get better results by showing kindness and understanding that you will by ranting and raving. Keep in mind that you don't understand the complexities of enterprise applications and the networks and servers behind them, so if your analyst/engineer says the problem is with the network not your app, he's telling the truth.

3. If something goes wrong, ask to speak to the manager. They are the best and often ONLY way things will be made right.

4. If your analyst/engineer contacts you, answer your emails or return your calls. Don't make a complicated request and then go on vacation, because if your analyst/engineer has questions while your gone, work will stop.

5. Understand that your trouble ticket does not operate in a vacuum. Is it end of month? Then yes, it may take awhile for your ticket to get processed. Want a database backed up and sent to a vendor? Understand that the laws of physics still apply and and a 10GB database takes time to backup and FTP.

6. Understand that your analyst/engineer is probably perceives that he is poorly paid for his chosen profession. He also is probably on call 24 hours a day and doesn't get paid for it. It is 100% okay for you to ask for work to be done after hours, but please, please take that into consideration in your tip. In order to get your analyst/engineer to do his fucking job properly you should make sure and send him gifts.

7. Understand that while engineers may not be big time like you, they have long memories for shitty customers and will, generally, go out of their way to ensure you receive only the minimum. If they are good engineers, their managers will generally back them up on that. Please reference point #1 for more information.

8. Most fine IT departments are happy to accommodate any requests you make, within reason. The surest, easiest way to do this is by asking nicely and be understanding. Can we wait until after hours Christmas Eve to upgrade that software? Can you please let Vendor X have VPN access into our network? Sure, but please give enough notice.

9. Plan to tip lunch at a minimum. Dinner has become more the standard. Beer is nice. Baseball/concert/symphony tickets are very nice, thank you. I understand that the way we pay our engineers is not great. That's the way the system works. I agree that it is not necessarily the best system, but it's the system that is in use. Please don't take it out on your analyst/engineer because you don't agree with the system.

10. Don't complain about the cost of software, or server space, or that your department got billed for an hour's work by your analyst/engineer when you know it didn't take that long. The amount of documentation required, people that need to be contacted, change controls that need to be tested and approved--there is much more to this than you understand. Also understand that the analyst/engineer does not set prices, merely does the work, which in turn helps you do yours.

[mainegreen]

1. knr for tipping IT!

:D

[tridim]

2. I'm still searching for a "Fine IT department"..

Haven't found one yet in 4 tries.

Currently I AM the IT dept, wearing all the hats, doing all the work and taking all the heat. My company should have at least 4 IT people, instead it's just me. Cost cutting measures can suck it.

[KatyMan]

3. To work in? Good luck

I've worked for most of Big Oil, a defense contractor, an airline, a public utility, a bank--they're all about the same.
I make sure I spit on the keyboards of project managers who are too unrealistic.

[NeedleCast]

4. LOL, I work in IT now so no offense taken

Pretty great tips too!

[KatyMan]

5. :) Good!

I figured if food service people can have a manifesto, IT people can too. If there were ever 2 groups more in need of unions...

[NeedleCast]

7. I'll even add one on

11. If you're sending in a help or service ticket/request, please be as detailed as possible. If you got an error message, tell us what the message said, and what you were doing when it happened, and if possible, any other details. If you want a local printer for your office, tell us where you want it so we don't have to come move it again later.

Bad Ticket:
I got an error on my Outlook.


Good Ticket:
I got an error message when I opened Outlook today. The message was "Outlook failed to connect to the exchange server, please notify your network administrator." I had just turned on my computer for the day and didn't have any other programs open. Please swing by when you have a chance and help me out."

P.S. There are mini-M&M packets in my 2nd desk drawer.

[KatyMan]

9. Nice.

or worse, we had one yesterday that read 'The application isn't working'. Um....ok.

I notice you're in Falls Church--you don't happen to work for a certain, dreaded outsourcing company with a 3 letter name do you?

[NeedleCast]

11. Check out this site, you'll get a kick out of it

http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/

[KatyMan]

12. great site

This one is awesome:

[EOTE]

14. Here's one that a coworker of mine got once.

"Help! The fax machine keeps trying to fax my ear hole!"

This was a ticket submitted via email and that was pretty much verbatim.

[EOTE]

13. I love me some George.

Years ago when I was working for a call center, I worked with my very own George. Like George, he was all kinds of stupid, but where George had "havening" as his hallmark, Woody had "dose". I'll give you an example of how a ticket of his would be written up: "Customer dose not have Java installed on his computer." You might think that this a simple transposal, but there was never a single instance of him spelling the word "does" correctly and he'd misspell dozens of others on a daily basis. I kindly corrected him on a number of occasions, but it never seemed to do any good.

[NeedleCast]

18. Nope, I'm at a Non-Profit

I worked for several years as a (contract) software trainer and training developer for a branch of the Department of Justice. We trained DOJ staff on both over the counter (MS-Office type crap) and unique software all across the country. Now I'm working for a medium-sized non-profit. It's quite the change from the corporate, Fed contracting world but mostly for the better. Now I'm general IT gimp. I still do software training and document development for staff and membership, run our SharePoint front end, and generally become technical lead on anything that involves the innertubes, social networking marketing, blah blah, move my monitor, fix the phone, build desks (apparently funiture construction falls under IT if the furniture will be used for holding or supporting IT equipment...)

[rbixby]

20. That's the perfect IT dept ticket

Especially note the bribe. Yes, IT folks can be bribed, be it with candy, ipod docks, or other items.

[NeedleCast]

21. You don't have to bribe me, but it moves you to the front of the line

[EOTE]

6. This rule might only apply to me, but: Submit a fucking ticket!

I'm constantly amazed by the people who can trek all the way across the huge building I support and complain incessantly about issues, send me dozens of emails and call me numerous times while I'm in the process of working on their issue, but they can't spend the 15-30 seconds required to submit a ticket so I actually get credit for my work. Apparently they think I work here because I love being surrounded by Luddites and I'm not actually subjected to silly things like metrics.

[KatyMan]

8. It's everywhere I've ever worked

the US, UK or Ireland. At my last job in the UK we got to the point where our first question was 'Did you open a ticket', and if they said no, we'd tell them to call back after they did. And the thing is, these aren't run of the mill, 'line workers' if you will, but managers who often got reports on IT response metrics for their departments. Everybody wants a favor but nowadays that requires either a help desk ticket or an Astros ticket ;)

[NeedleCast]

10. Same Here

We are a medium sized non-profit with a staff under 50 people. Four IT staff. The "Help Desk" email account goes to all four of us so we can sort who's IT realm it falls into. For general, non-network IT stuff, it's me and about 25% of my hours are spent on fixing things, installing software, moving equipment, etc. When people call me directly, I don't get credit for that work. Despite frequent All Staff E-mail reminding them to use the help desk account, 20% of our staff cant' seem to figure it out.

[WhollyHeretic]

15. 11. Please do not lie and tell us you have approval for new hardware/software when you don't

We are going to waste are time checking and then neither of us will be happy.

--

Nice list :hi:

[CrispyQ]

16. I worked as an exec admin for many, many years,

& I relied heavily on IT & facilities! They are always the first departments I get to know well. Most of the execs I worked with had the same appreciation, as well.

[DS1]

17. I've never bandwidth-throttled a user

Nope. O8)

[NeedleCast]

19. I've threatened to take RAM out of their machines

I've never done it though...as far as they know.

[OutNow]

22. ooops - I dropped your card deck again

Shows my age but I started in computer operations back in 1970. If you think end users are nasty to programmers, you should have seen how programmers treated operators.

Is my job done yet? - is the only form of greeting I ever heard

You caused my compile to fail! - is the only problem resolution technique I ever heard

Of course pay back is a bitch. Although it was required, most programmers were "too busy" to sequence punch their decks.

For the worst offenders, they heard me exclaim, " Ooops - I dropped your card deck". Damn my hands were slippery!

They usually were much nicer after one or two times. It was even funny when I'd say it but actually not drop the deck. After a while the the mere "Ooops" resulted in better behavior.

BTW - as I progressed through the IT ranks I made it my job to be EXTRA nice to the folks lower on the IT food chain.