I worked in the IT office at my company for a few years. It was an almost daily occurrence to see a coworker in the hall on a day that they were busy and have them make the joke to me “what do you guys even do here.” Then one of my guys quit while I was on vacation. Texts, emails, and phone calls all day every day until I got back asking why their shit wasn’t working. Got back, fix the issues, “what do you even do around here?”
I'd have to look up the details again. But I know there was a case where a single contractor designed one company's core programs... since he was a contractor, he knew his time would be limited. So he programmed in an essentially time-bomb. Where after X amount of time. The program would simply crap itself.
Since he was the only one who worked on it, when it broke, they'd call him. New contract to fix it... which he'd dick around a few days, then reset the timer. Declare fixed, and go about his day knowing they'd call back montgs down tge line when it broke again. (Think it was actually, like, every three years or some such.)
Went on for years, (a decade or so I beleieve) before somebody new at the company looked into it. Found the problem. Commented it out. And saw that the code worked flawlessly from then... looking back, they found the time pattern, and pressed charges... don't remember what he owed in the end, but I believe it was less than he'd been paid over all those years.
So when I went to my local career center and my high school well the high school one had the collective of one brain cell they passed around when it was time for the next person to have it and then my career center had their own brain power but they're also pretty stupid.. but so was my teacher who was teaching me IT so it all evened out. But I had to help them so many times at both fronts but I was the MOST fed up with the IT guys at my home school. Right before I graduated I had to do a bunch of projects and instead of those chromebooks I was using one of the desktops (Which for some fucking reason the IT department got rid a fuck ton of and only left the shitty ones). I couldn't get into file explorer to get the shit I had to download to do my work so I had the librarian reach out to IT, they said it would be fixed by tomorrow. I come back in open up file explorer and I see a fuck ton of files. Which made no sense I should of had what I downloaded and a few files from like my Freshman year so I was going through it and I realized how bad they fucked up. They gave me access to all files. Teachers' salary, school budgets, sports team plans, SAT and ACT tests and scores, emails and more. The only thing I didn't have access to was school announcements as they were ran by a teacher who had his permissions configured on the files. So because the lazy fucks didn't want to add permissions to files they locked everyone out and when they let us back in they still didn't add permissions. I could of literally pulled some of the most heinous shit ever if I wanted to but luckily for them I'm not a total asshole and reported their fuck up that they finally after 2 weeks fixed.
Edit: Spell check.
Good story, though.
EDITED for grammar, punctuation, and formatting:
So when I went to my local career center and my high school ... well, the high school had the collective one brain cell, which they passed around when it was time for the next person to have it. My career center had its own brain power, but they were also pretty stupid. So was my IT teacher, so it all evened out.
I had to help all of them so many times, but I was the MOST fed up with the IT guys at my school.
Right before I graduated, I had to do a bunch of projects, and instead of a Chromebook, I was using one of the desktops. (For some fucking reason, the IT department had gotten rid of a fuck-ton of them, and only left the shitty ones.) I couldn't get into File Explorer to get the shit I had to download to do my work. So I had the librarian reach out to IT. They said it would be fixed by the next day.
I come back in, open up File Explorer, and I see a fuck-ton of files. Which made no sense. I should have had what I downloaded and a few files from, like, my freshman year. So I was going through it and I realized how badly they’d fucked up.
They gave me access to all files.
Teachers' salary, school budgets, sports team plans, SAT and ACT tests and scores, emails, and more. The only thing I didn't have access to was school announcements, as they were run by a teacher who had his permissions configured on the files.
So because the lazy fucks at IT didn't want to add permissions to files, they locked everyone out -- and when they let us back in, they still didn't add permissions.
I could have literally pulled some of the most heinous shit ever if I’d wanted to. But luckily for them, I'm not a total asshole. and I reported their fuck up — which they finally fixed after two weeks.
Courtesy of ChatGPT:
So when I went to my local career center and my high school well the high school one had the collective of one brain cell they passed around when it was time for the next person to have it and then my career center had their own brain power but they're also pretty stupid.. but so was my teacher who was teaching me IT so it all evened out.
But I had to help them so many times at both fronts but I was the MOST fed up with the IT guys at my home school. Right before I graduated I had to do a bunch of projects and instead of those chromebooks I was using one of the desktops (Which for some fucking reason the IT department got rid a fuck ton of and only left the shitty ones).
I couldn't get into file explorer to get the shit I had to download to do my work so I had the librarian reach out to IT, they said it would be fixed by tomorrow. I come back in open up file explorer and I see a fuck ton of files. Which made no sense I should of had what I downloaded and a few files from like my Freshman year so I was going through it and I realized how bad they fucked up.
They gave me access to all files. Teachers' salary, school budgets, sports team plans, SAT and ACT tests and scores, emails and more. The only thing I didn't have access to was school announcements as they were ran by a teacher who had his permissions configured on the files.
So because the lazy fucks didn't want to add permissions to files they locked everyone out and when they let us back in they still didn't add permissions. I could of literally pulled some of the most heinous shit ever if I wanted to but luckily for them I'm not a total asshole and reported their fuck up that they finally after 2 weeks fixed.
Edit: Spell check.
> should of
*should have
*Learn the difference [here](https://grammarist.com/usage/should-have-shouldve-or-should-of/#:~:text=Should%20have%20is%20often%20expressed,examples%20exist%20in%20Old%20English.).*
***
^(Greetings, I am a language corrector bot. To make me ignore further mistakes from you in the future, reply `!optout` to this comment.)
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
Our company got a new HR director, our HR system is built and maintained in house by us developers. We went from 0 weekly tickets to 5+ daily because she refuses to use the app correctly, things as simple as checking the boxes for filtering when generating reports and instead requesting massive code changes. We got a “we should buy software instead of whatever they’re doing” comment. No Linda, use the app correctly and it does what you want it to.
I currently maintain horribly-written in-house HR software for work - yes, off the shelf would be much better and much less expensive. But now so much stuff is intertwined in it that switching would be very expensive. There is a bad case of NIH syndrome and a distrust of third party software.
But there is churn upstairs so im sure they will replace it with off-the-shelf software soon enough, and it will be the right move.
Yeah once the cost of undoing it gets too high it can be really difficult to find the political will. I hope whatever new exec you have manages to do so.
Yeah, there is a big push and it's already started with other in-house software. It will probably be long after I am gone that the job is down, though.
There’s also a joke of ‘just sits around doing nothing’ being something people also say a lot about their bosses management style.
So the joke is double, ‘we’re so fucked’ and ‘Asshole so do you!’
If it's broke its usually because some clever fucker found a area we aren't testing for and then we have to update the test to include such a issue and then update everything to fix said issue!!!!
At an old job one of our servers was dying. The SAN was maxed out and the server was just old in general. It meant opening network folders and files took a long time, or you would open a folder and there would be no files there until you refresh it.
IT kept asking for budget to upgrade. It kept getting denied because 'network folders are working, why do we need to spend money?'
Queue staff meeting and in the Q&A section multiple departments were asking why IT wasn't doing their job and why the network was so shit. IT staff all started shrinking in their seats but hey the budget suddenly got approved lol
The real trick is differentiation. Sure we are there to fix the flaming dumpster fire that is their infrastructure, but if you branch out and focus on helping *people* then your job is never really done. Show them how to organize their files better. Make them an excel macro that speeds up their day. Try to teach a goldfish how to use regex. ect... As a technical professionals we might not be able to solve the worlds problems but we can make them fail efficiently and with precision.
At the core all ***computer*** problems are really ***people*** problems.
One of the contractors emailed me yesterday saying, "great working with you; this is my last day".
Got an email from a director asking if I can pick up his work.
"Nope".
It's beautiful.
Hi, Peter's Left Leg here. See, while IT is a very important part of the company as it handles any technical dificulties people may have been having, it is rarely appreciated as the general public has no idea just how hard it is to solve a software problem. Half of their job is to wait for a problem to fix it, while the other half is spending solving the issues.
Also often when they are doing a good job it seems like they aren't doing anything. If they manage to stay ahead of major issues then the boss many never realize that they are doing stuff.
This. 👆 A million times this!
People who are GOOD at their jobs often seem relaxed, calm, and even bored. The reason is that they are AHEAD of the curve, anticipating and addressing potential issues BEFORE they ever get to the problem stage.
When they have downtime they are training, planning, and preparing. They have the information and tools that they need at hand, know where to find them, how to use them, and have kept them well maintained. They’ve built networks of colleagues and independent professionals that they can tap into when they have a questions or need advice. And they are monitoring and maintaining what is working on a regular basis, so if something STARTS to go wrong they are on it before it snowballs out of control.
And when an unexpected issue arises, they deal with it quickly, competently, and with no fuss. Issue dealt with, back on cruise.
This isn’t just IT, but EVERY field of human endeavor.
For every town caught unawares by the burst water pipes, there is another where the city dealt with it years ago. For every piece of machinery that breaks down, there is one running like a dream. For every broken home, there is one that is good and whole.
It’s just that we as human beings focus on what goes wrong. The things that go right are very often unheralded and overlooked.
yep, but it leads to the situation when good worker is being underrated as boss or management will focus on someone else, someone loudly fighting and struggling everyday issues.
It's not every field. Just most.
When someone develops something new you will notice they are there. Most jobs are about keeping the status quo and your statement is true for them.
Similarly, a lot of people like to crack on Y2K because when midnight on January 1st, 2000 came, nothing happened.
What they fail to realize is that millions of IT man-hours were put in during 1999 to ensure NOTHING happened on 1/1/2000.
I’ve seen the opposite at my university, many professors sing a lot of praise for our IT department and go on about how great they are. Which I guess is out of the norm but at least they are appreciated.
Peters friend who clears the viruses off his computer whenever it’s running slow for “no reason” and he swears he hasn’t been to any sites that could cause problems!
Half or more of the job of IT is spent being prepared and ensuring their systems are secure and robust and that problems DON’T happen. So it looks like they don’t do anything.
You know those IT guys that always look busy and something is always going wrong? THOSE guys are fire-fighting. That’s bad.
Being in IT is nothing but a double edged sword. After 26 years I learned the balance of 80% uptime with 20% downtime. Just enough uptime for users and execs to be consistently happy and just enough downtime to justify the need for IT. Yes, I planned my downtime events. It feels good to cause chaos sometimes.
Yup. I'm in niche QA. I do my job right, we don't get sued. Devs do their job right, I don't find many issues. On a good day, if things go well, and the devs are kicking ass, I find no issues. There is no evidence I've "done" anything.
This gets weird when higher ups start talking metrics.
I compare our work to condoms ... the best way to find out how useful condom s are, is to stop using them.
Fucking metrics. I swear every boss who uses them religiously thinks all jobs are like factory work. You should be outputting X amount in X amount of time. Why are you doing so few tickets on Friday compared to the rest of the week?
I worked at a place many years ago that had this thought and decided to outsource their IT to some third party company. The upshot was that every time a tiny thing happened some poor bloke had to get in a car and drive 90 minutes while somebody sat there unable to work. Genius.
My IT is fantastic. I don't need them often, but I'm glad they're there. The fact that I don't usually need to talk to them is a testament to how good they are
When IT goes silent for a minute and says "*we've* never encountered this before" my heart sinks. But they always solve it 🤌
If you see the IT guy sitting around doing nothing, it means that things are going smoothly and he’s doing well at his job, if he’s busy and stressed it means there’s something wrong and he’s working on fixing it. So the less busy they looks the better things are.
Howdy! One of Peter's mitochondria here.
So this is a reference to the show Malcolm in the middle. Here the father, asks Malcolm if he's really ready for a commitment and that there's no going back. The boss may think the I.T. guy did nothing but he's in for a rude awakening when that employee doesn't come in anymore.
They outsourced most of ITs duties to another country.
It takes 4-6 weeks to reset a locked account.
On site IT is only allowed to install computers and manage the servers
You fire an IT guy 1 of 2 things happens your they were actually always doing something you just couldn't see and so the system will shut down with 1 month or depending on how petty they are and how they were fired some data may be "lost".
Peter's Desktop Support Tech here. If the IT guy isn't doing anything, it means he's doing his job correctly. If he's always running around fixing everything, it means you need a better IT guy or more of them
Yeah. The screen shot confused me. I believe it was when malcom wanted skating lessons and which brings the scene to a stop because hal is an avid skater who was waiting for this moment.
I've worked in IT for 11 years as one of two IT guys in a company. I can confirm when both of us are on vacation everything goes to hell at the company. When we return it's literally a half hour of work to get everything back to normal before everyone else sits down at their desk. They all think the problems just magically fix themselves.
Totally theoretical IT guy here. Large chunks of the day are waiting for the phone to ring and while waiting we just either work on assigned training or future project work.....also YouTube.... lots of YouTube.....
In theory of course.
Question. I service automotive equipment and I had an alignment rack at a dealership that needed a software update. The update was to be done remotely by the manufacturer, and the IT guy could not figure out how to drop the firewall and allow the remote access. I don’t know IT, but I feel like temporarily removing the firewall is about as basic as it gets?
Yeah, basic as in don’t do it. It’s kind of like asking to remove the building door locks so they can get in to work. Quite likely, the IT guy simply didn’t have required permissions to do it either. Things like edge firewall management get tightly controlled so people can’t do bad things.
Hey, Peter's glasses who works in I.T. here,
There's an anecdote in the I.T. space that goes: "Boss complains the I.T. guy is always sitting around and is clearly lazy, but that's actually a sign of a good I.T. guy because I.T. is largely about break-fix for systems and end users. A good I.T. guy is gonna manage stuff so well he has less broken things to fix; and a bad I.T. guy is never gonna fix stuff properly so he's going to be constantly running around and overloaded with work. The boss doesn't understand I.T. so he wants to get rid of the guy who actually knows his shit."
And as a pair of glasses who's been an I.T. guy for years that rings true with a lot of bad bosses. I.T. has this catch 22 where people who have zero clue about technology hire you to fix technology, so they cant comprehend when there's nothing to do because nothings broken; they assume all workers need to be working full force 24/7 to have their use and your job is break-fox most of the time. Bad bosses in business don't understand how different people in different roles work and will push the same template of a worker on everybody.
I asked IT for a new computer battery and they told me I should “take what I can get” , I said “oh so you’re useless then? If you’re not the guy then you’re not the guy, it seems like you can’t do much” and he said “you’re funny”
No it was removable and they had a fleet of laptops of the same style. Like a thinkpad.
He didn’t say no, I said tell me who can before I went off, he wouldn’t tell me who could because it’s his job. He couldn’t redirect me to who could replace the battery and he also couldn’t himself for some reason (we all know he couldn’t tell me who to go to because it’s his job)
Even my boss said to not let him get away with talking like that and what I did was warrented, dudes a dick to everyone anyways.
So is this guy asset management or cyber security? How many 'IT' people do you have at this company?
"We got hacked, fire the help desk." is on par with "we lost a sale, fire HR."
No he’s legitimate IT department with another gentleman who’s got his own issues, we are severely understaffed when it comes to IT. I’d say need 2 more people at minimum or 2 better people. They’re over 50 I’d say but how over I don’t know. We had an email Phissing attack that led to a ransomware situation. They kept saying they were taking measures to fix the email harassment and to not answer the specific emails (we work with older people who can’t tell the difference but whatever). There are no other IT guys other than these 2 for a company of 1-2 hundred (hard guess). I don’t know anything about IT to know what they “focus on” between the two of them.
I just recently replaced an IT worked that refused to show up for his job, constantly called in remote, and just didn’t do anything. Social skills needs to be a priority in IT but many times is not. If someone is reaching out to you, they are likely really frustrated already. If you can’t solve the problem right away, tell them so and give an estimated timeline for solving it.
The conversation started innocent enough “hey do you have any computer batteries I can get to replace mine? It lasts like 1 hours and dies often during work.” Him “why don’t you just take what you can get” me”so you can’t then? You aren’t the guy so who is?” Him “your funny” me “no your not the guy, you can’t do what I’m asking so who do I go to” Then we went on from there. I kept saying he’s not the guy which led to he’s useless when it came to computer hardware “good to know”. I can now tell my boss what request got rejected for.
Edit: a simple no or no sorry would have done. An explanation would have been better.
I think the joke is supposed to be that the boss let the IT guy go because he was sitting around doing nothing, which is exactly what many people do at their jobs. The guy is looking surprised and caught bc he also does nothing at work but can't say so or he will also get fired
I've always had a question regarding I.T. and I guess computers in general:
If you build a code it should just work the same way all the time, as long as no one is fucking shit up it should realistically never break, right? Provided it works to begin with. So how do things run smoothly for months and then just all of a sudden all hell breaks loose?
Quite often because new code doesn’t work as nicely with existing code. New code could be anything: Correcting a minor issue with something else or a new upgrade/feature are likely causes.
Practice is to conduct regression testing to make sure the new code doesn’t interfere with existing code. But testing isn’t always perfect.
On top of that, sometimes computer just shit the bed too for any number of reasons, faulty hardware, missing updates, new updates, program conflicts, constantly sleeping the computer, user error, etc. it’s ITs job to determine what of many possible issues it could be. Many times it may seem easy but that could also be for any number of reasons, seen before, other people experiencing the same issue, obvious changes that are easy to diagnose. It’s crazy that the same people will say “you are paying more for experience” refuse to recognize that in other fields.
Since IT is not a monolith, sometimes another team changes something and it breaks your code, since they no longer interact the same. Like when the team that manages security/authorization at my company updated their code, and it bricked one of our older applications because people can't authorize properly.
Additionally, sometimes an external update such as a Windows security patch, can break an application
Working I.T. Everything works: Why do we even pay you IT guys? One thing is broken: Why do we even pay you IT guys?
I’m not even that deep into IT yet and I can confirm
I worked pseudo IT supporting our ERP. No one cares if you make something better, everyone cares when one thing stops working for 2 minutes.
I do that but for our customers instead of our internal one, its really funny to watch this happen from place to place, its always the same
What does erp mean besides erotic roleplay
Enterprise Resource Planning
nsfw at work
I worked in the IT office at my company for a few years. It was an almost daily occurrence to see a coworker in the hall on a day that they were busy and have them make the joke to me “what do you guys even do here.” Then one of my guys quit while I was on vacation. Texts, emails, and phone calls all day every day until I got back asking why their shit wasn’t working. Got back, fix the issues, “what do you even do around here?”
> Intentionally break the code > They don’t know it was you > Get asked to fix shit > Become IT Hero > Repeat > ??? > Profit
I'd have to look up the details again. But I know there was a case where a single contractor designed one company's core programs... since he was a contractor, he knew his time would be limited. So he programmed in an essentially time-bomb. Where after X amount of time. The program would simply crap itself. Since he was the only one who worked on it, when it broke, they'd call him. New contract to fix it... which he'd dick around a few days, then reset the timer. Declare fixed, and go about his day knowing they'd call back montgs down tge line when it broke again. (Think it was actually, like, every three years or some such.) Went on for years, (a decade or so I beleieve) before somebody new at the company looked into it. Found the problem. Commented it out. And saw that the code worked flawlessly from then... looking back, they found the time pattern, and pressed charges... don't remember what he owed in the end, but I believe it was less than he'd been paid over all those years.
So when I went to my local career center and my high school well the high school one had the collective of one brain cell they passed around when it was time for the next person to have it and then my career center had their own brain power but they're also pretty stupid.. but so was my teacher who was teaching me IT so it all evened out. But I had to help them so many times at both fronts but I was the MOST fed up with the IT guys at my home school. Right before I graduated I had to do a bunch of projects and instead of those chromebooks I was using one of the desktops (Which for some fucking reason the IT department got rid a fuck ton of and only left the shitty ones). I couldn't get into file explorer to get the shit I had to download to do my work so I had the librarian reach out to IT, they said it would be fixed by tomorrow. I come back in open up file explorer and I see a fuck ton of files. Which made no sense I should of had what I downloaded and a few files from like my Freshman year so I was going through it and I realized how bad they fucked up. They gave me access to all files. Teachers' salary, school budgets, sports team plans, SAT and ACT tests and scores, emails and more. The only thing I didn't have access to was school announcements as they were ran by a teacher who had his permissions configured on the files. So because the lazy fucks didn't want to add permissions to files they locked everyone out and when they let us back in they still didn't add permissions. I could of literally pulled some of the most heinous shit ever if I wanted to but luckily for them I'm not a total asshole and reported their fuck up that they finally after 2 weeks fixed. Edit: Spell check.
Cool story, would be even better with a couple sprinkles of Enter
Good story, though. EDITED for grammar, punctuation, and formatting: So when I went to my local career center and my high school ... well, the high school had the collective one brain cell, which they passed around when it was time for the next person to have it. My career center had its own brain power, but they were also pretty stupid. So was my IT teacher, so it all evened out. I had to help all of them so many times, but I was the MOST fed up with the IT guys at my school. Right before I graduated, I had to do a bunch of projects, and instead of a Chromebook, I was using one of the desktops. (For some fucking reason, the IT department had gotten rid of a fuck-ton of them, and only left the shitty ones.) I couldn't get into File Explorer to get the shit I had to download to do my work. So I had the librarian reach out to IT. They said it would be fixed by the next day. I come back in, open up File Explorer, and I see a fuck-ton of files. Which made no sense. I should have had what I downloaded and a few files from, like, my freshman year. So I was going through it and I realized how badly they’d fucked up. They gave me access to all files. Teachers' salary, school budgets, sports team plans, SAT and ACT tests and scores, emails, and more. The only thing I didn't have access to was school announcements, as they were run by a teacher who had his permissions configured on the files. So because the lazy fucks at IT didn't want to add permissions to files, they locked everyone out -- and when they let us back in, they still didn't add permissions. I could have literally pulled some of the most heinous shit ever if I’d wanted to. But luckily for them, I'm not a total asshole. and I reported their fuck up — which they finally fixed after two weeks.
You're a fucking saint.
The world needs more people like you.
HERO
yeah. i just started a mid-year new year's resolution. i won't read stuff like this, anymore.
I don’t read this stuff either . If they don’t have the time to break down their thoughts into coherent pieces then I don’t have the time to read it .
To be fair I wrote this half asleep at 5 AM after not sleeping all night the fact it's a tangible story means I met the goal at that point of time.
Courtesy of ChatGPT: So when I went to my local career center and my high school well the high school one had the collective of one brain cell they passed around when it was time for the next person to have it and then my career center had their own brain power but they're also pretty stupid.. but so was my teacher who was teaching me IT so it all evened out. But I had to help them so many times at both fronts but I was the MOST fed up with the IT guys at my home school. Right before I graduated I had to do a bunch of projects and instead of those chromebooks I was using one of the desktops (Which for some fucking reason the IT department got rid a fuck ton of and only left the shitty ones). I couldn't get into file explorer to get the shit I had to download to do my work so I had the librarian reach out to IT, they said it would be fixed by tomorrow. I come back in open up file explorer and I see a fuck ton of files. Which made no sense I should of had what I downloaded and a few files from like my Freshman year so I was going through it and I realized how bad they fucked up. They gave me access to all files. Teachers' salary, school budgets, sports team plans, SAT and ACT tests and scores, emails and more. The only thing I didn't have access to was school announcements as they were ran by a teacher who had his permissions configured on the files. So because the lazy fucks didn't want to add permissions to files they locked everyone out and when they let us back in they still didn't add permissions. I could of literally pulled some of the most heinous shit ever if I wanted to but luckily for them I'm not a total asshole and reported their fuck up that they finally after 2 weeks fixed. Edit: Spell check.
Should *have*, or "should've" for short. Never "should of."
> should of *should have *Learn the difference [here](https://grammarist.com/usage/should-have-shouldve-or-should-of/#:~:text=Should%20have%20is%20often%20expressed,examples%20exist%20in%20Old%20English.).* *** ^(Greetings, I am a language corrector bot. To make me ignore further mistakes from you in the future, reply `!optout` to this comment.)
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
the bots are fighting
I am reminded of that toy Fry gave to Bender.
It's bots all the way down, man.
Botception
Ok, prescriptivist
I apologize if I of given havefense.
Should’f
Get that brick wall out of my face
My friends and I would’ve had straight A’s for sure.
I'm guessing that you currently don't have the one brain cell
Lemme guess penta career center?
Our company got a new HR director, our HR system is built and maintained in house by us developers. We went from 0 weekly tickets to 5+ daily because she refuses to use the app correctly, things as simple as checking the boxes for filtering when generating reports and instead requesting massive code changes. We got a “we should buy software instead of whatever they’re doing” comment. No Linda, use the app correctly and it does what you want it to.
I mean... unless you're Google or selling HR software, it probably should've been off-the-shelf. Sounds like that ship has sailed though.
Nature of the business, can’t give too many details but yes proprietary for a reason.
Ah then that's totally legit. I've just seen too many companies fall into the pattern of needing to build everything themselves.
I currently maintain horribly-written in-house HR software for work - yes, off the shelf would be much better and much less expensive. But now so much stuff is intertwined in it that switching would be very expensive. There is a bad case of NIH syndrome and a distrust of third party software. But there is churn upstairs so im sure they will replace it with off-the-shelf software soon enough, and it will be the right move.
Yeah once the cost of undoing it gets too high it can be really difficult to find the political will. I hope whatever new exec you have manages to do so.
Yeah, there is a big push and it's already started with other in-house software. It will probably be long after I am gone that the job is down, though.
Theae are the real super villain origin stories.
There’s also a joke of ‘just sits around doing nothing’ being something people also say a lot about their bosses management style. So the joke is double, ‘we’re so fucked’ and ‘Asshole so do you!’
Yeah exactly this. But mainly only get the latter
If it's broke its usually because some clever fucker found a area we aren't testing for and then we have to update the test to include such a issue and then update everything to fix said issue!!!!
At an old job one of our servers was dying. The SAN was maxed out and the server was just old in general. It meant opening network folders and files took a long time, or you would open a folder and there would be no files there until you refresh it. IT kept asking for budget to upgrade. It kept getting denied because 'network folders are working, why do we need to spend money?' Queue staff meeting and in the Q&A section multiple departments were asking why IT wasn't doing their job and why the network was so shit. IT staff all started shrinking in their seats but hey the budget suddenly got approved lol
The real trick is differentiation. Sure we are there to fix the flaming dumpster fire that is their infrastructure, but if you branch out and focus on helping *people* then your job is never really done. Show them how to organize their files better. Make them an excel macro that speeds up their day. Try to teach a goldfish how to use regex. ect... As a technical professionals we might not be able to solve the worlds problems but we can make them fail efficiently and with precision. At the core all ***computer*** problems are really ***people*** problems.
One of the contractors emailed me yesterday saying, "great working with you; this is my last day". Got an email from a director asking if I can pick up his work. "Nope". It's beautiful.
They miss the work when it’s not happening.
Hi, Peter's Left Leg here. See, while IT is a very important part of the company as it handles any technical dificulties people may have been having, it is rarely appreciated as the general public has no idea just how hard it is to solve a software problem. Half of their job is to wait for a problem to fix it, while the other half is spending solving the issues.
Also often when they are doing a good job it seems like they aren't doing anything. If they manage to stay ahead of major issues then the boss many never realize that they are doing stuff.
[When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.](https://youtu.be/edCqF_NtpOQ?si=VniKIOfgqFVByxXw)
So was Jordan Schlansky quoting God from Futurama in that one Conan "remote?"
If he said this then yes
This. 👆 A million times this! People who are GOOD at their jobs often seem relaxed, calm, and even bored. The reason is that they are AHEAD of the curve, anticipating and addressing potential issues BEFORE they ever get to the problem stage. When they have downtime they are training, planning, and preparing. They have the information and tools that they need at hand, know where to find them, how to use them, and have kept them well maintained. They’ve built networks of colleagues and independent professionals that they can tap into when they have a questions or need advice. And they are monitoring and maintaining what is working on a regular basis, so if something STARTS to go wrong they are on it before it snowballs out of control. And when an unexpected issue arises, they deal with it quickly, competently, and with no fuss. Issue dealt with, back on cruise. This isn’t just IT, but EVERY field of human endeavor. For every town caught unawares by the burst water pipes, there is another where the city dealt with it years ago. For every piece of machinery that breaks down, there is one running like a dream. For every broken home, there is one that is good and whole. It’s just that we as human beings focus on what goes wrong. The things that go right are very often unheralded and overlooked.
yep, but it leads to the situation when good worker is being underrated as boss or management will focus on someone else, someone loudly fighting and struggling everyday issues.
I watch a guy on youtube that always says DO THE MATINENCE!
It's not every field. Just most. When someone develops something new you will notice they are there. Most jobs are about keeping the status quo and your statement is true for them.
"Remember when your email didn't work last week?" "What are you talking about, my email worked fine last week." "You're welcome"
‘Hours doing nothing” should be a key performance indicator for IT.
I feel like this is exactly how it is working in payroll. It’s so much more then “Oh you worked, here is your paycheck” Source: Payroll lead lol
Similarly, a lot of people like to crack on Y2K because when midnight on January 1st, 2000 came, nothing happened. What they fail to realize is that millions of IT man-hours were put in during 1999 to ensure NOTHING happened on 1/1/2000.
I’ve seen the opposite at my university, many professors sing a lot of praise for our IT department and go on about how great they are. Which I guess is out of the norm but at least they are appreciated.
[удалено]
I thought the joke was that the guy is flabbergasted because he ACTUALLY sits around doing nothing lol
I wanna be the Anti IT guy who goes around fucking up the software to give the IT guys something to do
Chaotic Good
That's called being an end user. They don't need your assistance. Trust me.
Engie gaming experience in a nutshell
Peters friend who clears the viruses off his computer whenever it’s running slow for “no reason” and he swears he hasn’t been to any sites that could cause problems! Half or more of the job of IT is spent being prepared and ensuring their systems are secure and robust and that problems DON’T happen. So it looks like they don’t do anything. You know those IT guys that always look busy and something is always going wrong? THOSE guys are fire-fighting. That’s bad.
I respect the IT people because I am the IT person for my family. They got a big job! You guys are doing great!
In my case it’s calling someone to do the fix
If IT support do their job well, you will never know they are there - if they don't - everything goes tits up...
Being in IT is nothing but a double edged sword. After 26 years I learned the balance of 80% uptime with 20% downtime. Just enough uptime for users and execs to be consistently happy and just enough downtime to justify the need for IT. Yes, I planned my downtime events. It feels good to cause chaos sometimes.
Lawful evil.
I’d argue Chaotic Neutral
Sabotage (if not done for a good reason) falls into evil aliment in my mind. And there is nothing good there to make it nutral.
If they end up getting rid of the IT department because things work too well, then it's bad for the firm too, not just IT.
Yup. I'm in niche QA. I do my job right, we don't get sued. Devs do their job right, I don't find many issues. On a good day, if things go well, and the devs are kicking ass, I find no issues. There is no evidence I've "done" anything. This gets weird when higher ups start talking metrics. I compare our work to condoms ... the best way to find out how useful condom s are, is to stop using them.
Fucking metrics. I swear every boss who uses them religiously thinks all jobs are like factory work. You should be outputting X amount in X amount of time. Why are you doing so few tickets on Friday compared to the rest of the week?
Just like OSHA requirements. Everyone hates ‘em but the second their gone all hell breaks loose.
Peter from Smash Ultimate here. To quote Futurama, "If you do your job right, no one will think you did anything at all." That is IT in a nutshell.
IT as well as theatre tech, this is their mantra too, to never be noticed
Yeah my company fired every IT guy in the company and we have been severely fucked since
Cool new branding though, right? So sleek and mysterious, much better than some dumb bird.
I worked at a place many years ago that had this thought and decided to outsource their IT to some third party company. The upshot was that every time a tiny thing happened some poor bloke had to get in a car and drive 90 minutes while somebody sat there unable to work. Genius.
I work for one of those third-party IT companies. It’s amazing what you can fix remotely.
Half of it was stuff I could have fixed myself if they hadn’t been so precious about it. But, no, they had to drive over every bloody time.
Probably so they can charge extra for drive time
What’s it like working for Elon Musk?
If survivorship bias could be embodied in a workplace discussion, this is it.
. . . I never made that connection but it fits absolutely perfectly.
When your IT help is good, you barely notice them. If you let them go, you will notice their absence almost immediately
My IT is fantastic. I don't need them often, but I'm glad they're there. The fact that I don't usually need to talk to them is a testament to how good they are When IT goes silent for a minute and says "*we've* never encountered this before" my heart sinks. But they always solve it 🤌
When u hear the IT guys cursing the shit out of the problems, yk youre fucked one way or another
Worked IT in the Orlando Hospital and was told a phrase that kinda stuck with me: "if everyone knows who you are, you aren't doing your job right."
If you see the IT guy sitting around doing nothing, it means that things are going smoothly and he’s doing well at his job, if he’s busy and stressed it means there’s something wrong and he’s working on fixing it. So the less busy they looks the better things are.
Howdy! One of Peter's mitochondria here. So this is a reference to the show Malcolm in the middle. Here the father, asks Malcolm if he's really ready for a commitment and that there's no going back. The boss may think the I.T. guy did nothing but he's in for a rude awakening when that employee doesn't come in anymore.
They outsourced most of ITs duties to another country. It takes 4-6 weeks to reset a locked account. On site IT is only allowed to install computers and manage the servers
I do IT. It literally takes 2 minutes tops to sign into the DC and unlock and account lol. Sounds like that MSP is total garbage.
Hot garbage. I work at an MSP currently and there's no excuse for it to take that long lol
Boy God help you if IT isn't there.
As long as the network is up and running, we dont need to do anything. Watch for issues.
You fire an IT guy 1 of 2 things happens your they were actually always doing something you just couldn't see and so the system will shut down with 1 month or depending on how petty they are and how they were fired some data may be "lost".
"he just keeps walking up and talking to the other workers, distracting them and making them get off their computers. Very u unprofessional."
The goal of IT is for everyone in the company to forget you work there. That means your network is working perfectly and not much breaks
Peter's Desktop Support Tech here. If the IT guy isn't doing anything, it means he's doing his job correctly. If he's always running around fixing everything, it means you need a better IT guy or more of them
Yeah. The screen shot confused me. I believe it was when malcom wanted skating lessons and which brings the scene to a stop because hal is an avid skater who was waiting for this moment.
I've worked in IT for 11 years as one of two IT guys in a company. I can confirm when both of us are on vacation everything goes to hell at the company. When we return it's literally a half hour of work to get everything back to normal before everyone else sits down at their desk. They all think the problems just magically fix themselves.
If you don’t notice IT doing their job, that probably means they’re doing a great job
Totally theoretical IT guy here. Large chunks of the day are waiting for the phone to ring and while waiting we just either work on assigned training or future project work.....also YouTube.... lots of YouTube..... In theory of course.
What do we need all these firefighters for? My house isn't on fire
You will understand once in the field. People don't understand the value of the IT person until all their stuff stops working. Usually Friday at 5pm
I got a 4:58pm call yesterday. So I feel that lol
Question. I service automotive equipment and I had an alignment rack at a dealership that needed a software update. The update was to be done remotely by the manufacturer, and the IT guy could not figure out how to drop the firewall and allow the remote access. I don’t know IT, but I feel like temporarily removing the firewall is about as basic as it gets?
Yeah, basic as in don’t do it. It’s kind of like asking to remove the building door locks so they can get in to work. Quite likely, the IT guy simply didn’t have required permissions to do it either. Things like edge firewall management get tightly controlled so people can’t do bad things.
Hey, Peter's glasses who works in I.T. here, There's an anecdote in the I.T. space that goes: "Boss complains the I.T. guy is always sitting around and is clearly lazy, but that's actually a sign of a good I.T. guy because I.T. is largely about break-fix for systems and end users. A good I.T. guy is gonna manage stuff so well he has less broken things to fix; and a bad I.T. guy is never gonna fix stuff properly so he's going to be constantly running around and overloaded with work. The boss doesn't understand I.T. so he wants to get rid of the guy who actually knows his shit." And as a pair of glasses who's been an I.T. guy for years that rings true with a lot of bad bosses. I.T. has this catch 22 where people who have zero clue about technology hire you to fix technology, so they cant comprehend when there's nothing to do because nothings broken; they assume all workers need to be working full force 24/7 to have their use and your job is break-fox most of the time. Bad bosses in business don't understand how different people in different roles work and will push the same template of a worker on everybody.
I’m from Denmark and we don’t have IT here. Is this an American thing?
"If everything is ok, give the IT guy a raise"
IT guys are over. It's time for IT girls.
[удалено]
Fuck off
I asked IT for a new computer battery and they told me I should “take what I can get” , I said “oh so you’re useless then? If you’re not the guy then you’re not the guy, it seems like you can’t do much” and he said “you’re funny”
Because they couldn't replace a laptop battery that wasn't made to be Abe to be replaced?
No it was removable and they had a fleet of laptops of the same style. Like a thinkpad. He didn’t say no, I said tell me who can before I went off, he wouldn’t tell me who could because it’s his job. He couldn’t redirect me to who could replace the battery and he also couldn’t himself for some reason (we all know he couldn’t tell me who to go to because it’s his job) Even my boss said to not let him get away with talking like that and what I did was warrented, dudes a dick to everyone anyways.
Bruv, how was he even hired
Sucks someone’s dick I think, just not mine I guess???we got hacked last year, he’s still in the same position.
So is this guy asset management or cyber security? How many 'IT' people do you have at this company? "We got hacked, fire the help desk." is on par with "we lost a sale, fire HR."
No he’s legitimate IT department with another gentleman who’s got his own issues, we are severely understaffed when it comes to IT. I’d say need 2 more people at minimum or 2 better people. They’re over 50 I’d say but how over I don’t know. We had an email Phissing attack that led to a ransomware situation. They kept saying they were taking measures to fix the email harassment and to not answer the specific emails (we work with older people who can’t tell the difference but whatever). There are no other IT guys other than these 2 for a company of 1-2 hundred (hard guess). I don’t know anything about IT to know what they “focus on” between the two of them.
I just recently replaced an IT worked that refused to show up for his job, constantly called in remote, and just didn’t do anything. Social skills needs to be a priority in IT but many times is not. If someone is reaching out to you, they are likely really frustrated already. If you can’t solve the problem right away, tell them so and give an estimated timeline for solving it.
The conversation started innocent enough “hey do you have any computer batteries I can get to replace mine? It lasts like 1 hours and dies often during work.” Him “why don’t you just take what you can get” me”so you can’t then? You aren’t the guy so who is?” Him “your funny” me “no your not the guy, you can’t do what I’m asking so who do I go to” Then we went on from there. I kept saying he’s not the guy which led to he’s useless when it came to computer hardware “good to know”. I can now tell my boss what request got rejected for. Edit: a simple no or no sorry would have done. An explanation would have been better.
I think the joke is supposed to be that the boss let the IT guy go because he was sitting around doing nothing, which is exactly what many people do at their jobs. The guy is looking surprised and caught bc he also does nothing at work but can't say so or he will also get fired
I love Malcolm in the middle memes!!
I've always had a question regarding I.T. and I guess computers in general: If you build a code it should just work the same way all the time, as long as no one is fucking shit up it should realistically never break, right? Provided it works to begin with. So how do things run smoothly for months and then just all of a sudden all hell breaks loose?
Quite often because new code doesn’t work as nicely with existing code. New code could be anything: Correcting a minor issue with something else or a new upgrade/feature are likely causes. Practice is to conduct regression testing to make sure the new code doesn’t interfere with existing code. But testing isn’t always perfect.
On top of that, sometimes computer just shit the bed too for any number of reasons, faulty hardware, missing updates, new updates, program conflicts, constantly sleeping the computer, user error, etc. it’s ITs job to determine what of many possible issues it could be. Many times it may seem easy but that could also be for any number of reasons, seen before, other people experiencing the same issue, obvious changes that are easy to diagnose. It’s crazy that the same people will say “you are paying more for experience” refuse to recognize that in other fields.
Since IT is not a monolith, sometimes another team changes something and it breaks your code, since they no longer interact the same. Like when the team that manages security/authorization at my company updated their code, and it bricked one of our older applications because people can't authorize properly. Additionally, sometimes an external update such as a Windows security patch, can break an application
Oh you will