The treatment of IT...

Well, given I am currently working at an IT Consulting firm as well as part of a corporation IT, I have seen something that really makes me think people really don't understand how they treat IT people.

1) We're human... - I know it is a shock for some of you. When IT people are hired, they are expected to know everything technical about things. But believe it or not, we get sick, we get tired, we even pitch hissy fits like the rest of the human race. And at the same time, there will be things we have no clue about.

This means, there are things we don't know, and need to look it up. Certifications also don't guarantee those people know what is wrong. Believe it nor not, even certified people ask others if they have encountered a situation that comes up, because complex systems can have multiple things go horribly, horribly wrong.

2) We tend to get treated like crap - While I admit, there are times some of us IT people seem like we are condescending to people, at the same time, stop and think for a moment too. We get people who come to us, sometimes with a "I'm better than you..." attitude at times.

Case in point, my former boss (The one with NO IT experience.) In a meeting, he tells us that our Internet should be faster. The company has 2 T1 Data lines, that is about 2.8 megabit/second pipe for up and downloading data. Now, for a small company, that is within reason for just mail and some web browsing. Big file downloads, well, they will slow things down for a company, but it won't kill the business unless we are talking downloading gigabytes of information. For those of you who don't know, roughly 10 gigabits == 1 gigabyte. (For the more literal types, it is closer to 8 gigabits == gigabyte).

Getting back to the 'I know better than you...' part of the story... In this meeting, he tells me that GE's Internet is faster than what we have... Amgen's Internet is faster than what we have.

Well, this is literally true. GE is a NATIONAL based company. Amgen is, at the very least, a large corporation. Our company, on the other hand, just shy of 200 people.

The thing is, you want to know how he measured how fast the internet is?

By how long a web page loaded up on a web browser.

Yes, my friends... He measured our internet speed by how fast a web page loaded up. But it gets better. He has never WORKED for GE. He has never WORKED for Amgen. So, I am being told that the internet is too slow for our company, based on his perception of how fast a web page loads up, and also his belief that bigger companies have a web page that loads up in 2 seconds.

But wait! It gets better!!! Despite having an ISP help us look into a few things and making some minor changes... He feels it STILL has not improved. Despite my assurance that this isn't going to be any better, he insists that his internet connection at home is FASTER.

Now, to put this in proper perspective for everyone... Both he and I are on cable modem. Same provider. We time the web page, getting an average of a 9 to 10 second load time for it at the corporation, sitting behind a Firewall, an ISA server and using a 3 or so year old computer.

At home, for both of us... We get about 10 to 13 second load time for the same page. Me, I am sitting behind a D-Link Wireless Router, directly wired to the router and sharing with some people here. He is, presumably behind some wireless router. But basically, the same amount of time as me.

So now there is egg on his face about this. But it seems he approached other people about it, and of course, not giving them the same criteria... They give him different results.

Now, to help educate some of you a little on this... Faster Internet speeds does mean 'faster downloads'. However, it depends on what you are transferring and how. A web browser downloads content a little at a time. Most web pages have tons of content, little stuff as well as just the basic information. Things like tracking pixels that retail sites use to register hits. The pretty background pictures to various image farms all over the US cause having thousands of users hitting one little server for images and content would kill one internet connection. The ads hosted by another group to fund the page. The media hosted by another server for more data. After a while, you are establishing multiple attempts to get the stuff on one web page. Your computer is chugging along, saving some of that locally, writing it to your hard drive to make it faster to look at if you were to go back to the page at some point, which, in itself, slows things down cause the browser is waiting for that to be done before getting more stuff.

No matter how fast your internet speed is, there will be a limit to how fast a web page will load up. If you were on dial-up, yes, you would notice it. Dial-up speeds currently cap out at 56 kilobits/second, if you are lucky. DSL's cheapest, slowest connection is 512 kilobits/second. If the content is over the 50 kilobytes (That's roughly 500 kilobits in size), you will notice an improvement in loading web pages, but it will still cap out, purely on the amount of multiple connections to pull content and also how fast the sites can give the content out, because they can only go so fast with X number of people also trying to access that content or similar.

So with that little education, why all the hype about 'High Speed Internet'? Well, the high speed internet hype is true when you look at '1' file transfer. When you and the other side have as much speed possible, you will download content faster. This is why Bit Torrent is currently the most widely used and reviled method of getting files. But we will save that for another rant.

3) We aren't mind readers... - You will be surprised how many calls I get where I know people are frustrated. However, the biggest gripe all IT people have is that when we get calls from people, we are expected to know what you are talking about.

Case in point: One location is having a problem with their computers. The manager is frustrated and he is calling me. The problem is, he is saying some things that just doesn't make sense. To him, it makes perfect sense, but again, I am not there, I can't see what he is talking about and I try to speak with him to get a better idea of what is going on.

Now, I don't expect people to be a tech to know what I am talking about. But when you tell me the computer isn't working, when your location has like 5 computers, it helps to know which computer is having the problem... And what the problem is. It's like taking your car to a mechanic and saying your car isn't working and then expecting him to fix it, and he has no idea WHERE to begin short of that the car engine MIGHT be ok because you drove the car to him.

4) Rage... - Now, a lot of techs are expected to be professional to people. But just like those people who take your phone calls for customer service, IT techs also get the fair share of 'angry' people yelling at them. This goes along with my earlier mention of being Human... We aren't smiling yes men, but expected to be smiling yes men.

I will tell you, when we have vacations... We want to turn off the phones and hope that the building doesn't, or more work piling up. When you walk away, there will be times we want to close the door and pull out the voodoo doll and stick pins in it, thinking bad thoughts about you because you raged on us and we have to sit there and take it. Or some, like me... Go home and vent our rage in very violent games, imagining you being on the other end of the virtual gun to satisfy the grief of having to deal with you.

Now while some of these things we all could go to HR about this, the problem is, most times, people don't take the time to understand the simple fact that the IT's job is to help the company as a whole.

5) Unfair expectations... - This happens a lot. Believe it or not, someone comes to IT, expecting them to whip out something with little prep time or proper testing.

You want IT to set up a new user, new computer and everything. That new user starts tomorrow. Well, unless you bothered to check with IT to see if they have a new computer stored in their department (Which 90% of the time, this is not the case)... It takes a minimum of 2 days to get a computer to the company. A minimum of 2 hours for the IT to prep the computer for the company needs (This is provided the belief that they have a prepared system image for the computer in question to put onto the computer, and then preparing any additional software or setups for the particular user.) So you are at least looking at 2 days of no computer availability to a user, longer if you want specific, custom setup, which means, no image to load, software needs to be loaded, and properly setup and waiting for specific parts to show up based on availability. Even more fun, is the haggling of the COST of it.

Again, unfair expectations given to the IT department. What I just outlined to you is what I have seen commonly among some companies when they want to setup new people, but don't plan ahead, they just assume it magically appears and is ready to go.

This is the same with projects getting assigned. Some groups think, "Hey, this is a good idea, have IT implement it in two weeks." The problem is, some projects take longer than that depending on what is involved, which requires research and testing. However, many people don't bother asking, they just assume it can be done and push it forward. Again, unfair expectations given to the IT department and we are treated as the villain or the fools for not meeting your expectations.

6) Just make it work... But we don't want to pay for more... - There are some companies who have a setup that is working, but it is amazing it is still holding together. One company I am supporting has a Windows Domain Controller with DHCP and DNS for their domain. They also have some Router... Which is also doing DHCP and DNS. For those of you who don't know what either are... DHCP, in layman's terms, is what tells your computer what address you have and where your computer goes next to get to the internet. DNS is the service that translates things like www.yahoo.com to a computer address, so the computer can send a communication to.

Well, here's the problem with having a Windows Domain Controller with DHCP and DNS service competing with a Router that does the same thing. If you happen to have a computer that needs to talk to the domain controller for things like accessing a server for files, or some services, and your computer gets its DHCP from the Router... The router will tell your computer, "You get your DNS from me..." Well, if you are trying to talk to the domain controller named \\Server1... Sometimes, your Domain controller doesn't tell the router 'I'm Server1, I'm the Domain Controller'. And when your computer is trying to authenticate for your Domain of 'MyDomain', the router doesn't know that 'Server1' is the 'Domain Controller'. So it won't let you know where to go for the domain controller.

Well, for this company, their problems are slowly beginning to show as their computers are slowly going, "Hey, I can't talk to the domain controller!" And my company is offering to fix the whole thing properly, but we are told, "No, it is only affecting this one computer, fix it for just this one..."

Well, you know... If you don't want to trust IT to help you to fix it right... Be sure not to fault them for future problems when they are trying to help you do it the right way the first time, and you aren't willing to go there.

Now I know... A lot of people are not IT type people, they have no IT experience or know what it is like. And that is also the reason why you get irritable techs or high turn over with those types, it is simply the fact that people don't realize that IT is treated like that by people in the company. No place is immune to this unless they take the steps to understand this, the sad thing of it all, however, is that most people are not willing to see that.

The idiocy of corporate decisions...

So, as an IT tech, it is amazing how you can see poor decisions being made.

The one that comes to mind is the where I last worked at.

The company's VP of IT is leaving... So a decision is made to promote someone within the company to run the IT department. Who gets picked to run the department of IT? Not one of the four guys who have been in the IT department for 9-10 years... Not a VP who might have some IT experience or again, one of the four guys with over 10 years of IT experience...

A 27-28 year old person who started in marketing, goes into inventory, and becomes some planning manager gets picked. No IT experience, and with the rumor that he was 'recommended' by the VP of IT as a joke.

Suffice it to say, ever had to deal with a person with no IT experience trying to run an IT department?

Here is an example of a train wreck waiting to happen:

You have a person who is only familiar with some aspects of the company, mostly in marketing and inventory of the company. A person who believes he has a better grasp of the company than anyone else. Now take said person, and give him a job that allows him to direct IT to do whatever he wants, he just has to run it. It's like giving a kid the keys to a toy store and telling him to run it. He will only care about what he wants, and others will just have to accept it.

Well, this happened. One decision was, "Hey, let's go redo this server room. Clean it up and rewire everything."

Great idea. Only one problem... No redundancy for the business to afford a lot of down time.

His response, "Well, we will be down a day... No big deal, it is for the good of the company."

Ok... As long as they know that...

But wait, it gets better. The company has a call center, that accesses some of the servers. We get told that we will plan to do this server redo next weekend. But wait, was this worked out with other departments? NOPE.

What's real fun is also how he handled the situation... We informed the Call Center about this plan and they said this can't happen, because they have scheduled people 2 weeks in advance, they can't afford to have servers down because they were not prepared for this. When he heard about this, he tried to end run around the manager to push it through. Luckily, the person above that manager had sense enough to state that this had to be worked out with the call center manager.

Another problem this 'director' had, is his inability to listen and reasonably plan out things. As you can see above, he never really bothered to talk to other departments or see how it would affect people. One of his 'great' ideas is to make departments pay for their IT needs. Which for Finance, it was great... But for the other departments, which were not told about this... Found it to be a shock to their budgets... And most wouldn't have had an issue, had it been discussed to them before hand.

Another good example of inability to listen: Explaining migration of Windows Servers, namely, going from an older Windows System to a Newer one. It is generally recommended to do a clean install of a Windows Server OS and run things parallel. We had an old Windows 2000 server running some business critical systems. He wanted to upgrade it to the latest and greatest. I informed him the proper way to do it, but he wouldn't hear that it isn't the best way... Truly professional to ignore your own staff and treat them like they don't know what they are talking about when you, yourself, don't know enough about IT.

So now the question is... How sane is it for people to keep a director in a position he is not suited for or in this case, making the department that has supported the company, no longer care about the company's well being?

Well, sadly, the company is still having said person running the department. Two of those people, myself included, are no longer with the company. One of the two remaining people are frustrated and wants to be fired.

So people, if you see something like this happening... It's time to bail the ship. When the monkeys want to run the show, it is something bound to go down burning.

First Entry...

Well, this is my first Entry. I won't say who I am, so I will go by the name of Keiichi Sakai, since I kind of use this handle somewhere else and go, what the hell, stick with the name.

I decided to create Ranting Technician cause I'm a computer tech... Which means, I'm one of those damn computer geeks and like many of us, we got something to rant about. So I was planning on just ranting about stuff I have seen and I am sure many others have something similar, but what the hey, maybe someone might like to read about some of the things I rant about...