The Glade 4.0

I rescind my agreement to disagree!

They were in the same department, but were not in the same physical location at that time.

I am once again agreeable to agree to disagree, agreed?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

THis is how it would go down here.

(I'll use a real example.)

Stock Broker: "I'm in a different city today, and went to one of our banks. I want to log on at a bank computer, but it won't let me log on."
Helpdesk guy: "Uh, I physically can't do that, let me see if our Tier 2 can help you."
Me (after being informed of the situation): "No, you can't do that."
Stock Broker: "That's not acceptable. I need to do my job here today."
Me: "The domain your user account is on is not allowed to access the bank domain. These are compliance regulations. We cannot support that."
Stock Broker: "I'll have you fired, little girl. I make the money around here, do as I say."
Me: "No, you won't have me fired. These calls are recorded. I'm sorry, but if you need a terminal set up at that bank location, there are forms to fill out, cost centers to bill, and it takes a few weeks. You're not going to get logged on there today."
Stock Broker: "You're all incompetent." (Hangs up.)
Me: {Bring call to manager's attention}
The next day, me, my manager, the VP of the department, and the stock broker's manager and district manager all receive a nice formal apology letter the stock broker was forced to write.

As for helping with {application}, you don't want me helping. I don't know how to use it. None of my department does. It's not in the requirements for our position, we have no use for it, and we're not how-to support. You can ask me to support it all you want, but (1) it's a waste of money, since {application} monkeys don't cost as much, and (2) I know less about it than the person asking for help since I have never used it in my life. It's a waste of your time.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Without knowing what the code in question was to do, I have to make some assumptions. First and foremost, that if this is code that the CEO is personally interested in enough that he would be referenced for why somebody was busy, the code in question is most probably of great expected benefit. Certainly of more benefit than a single trader for five minutes.

Now with that in mind, the VP has just set back development of this code by as much as the full amount of time this programmer had been working on it. We will assume the CEO at least has a ballpark estimate of the expected value of the tool. That being the case, if the entirety of the work is lost (i.e. another programmer must start from scratch), we can then know what either the lost revenue or wasted resources that this tool was supposed to alleviate are. Even if there is some salvageable portion of it, we can still know either the lost revenue or wasted resources.

So now the question is, if this company has the means to know that one trade over five minutes is -$50k, and we know how many traders there are and how many trades are occurring in a day and some other things, how many millions of dollars over how much time must this code have been worth that the CEO would have a personal interest in it? So now this VP has just cost the company some currently unknown quantity for the known quantity of $50k. Do we think the VP has cost the company an additional <=$50k, or >$50k?

That's fantastic. Of course, it raises the question of what was the job you were going for, janitor? If I was in an interview, and the deciding factor was whether or not I picked up a piece of trash on my way in instead of the credentials I carried in the door, that's some place that isn't correctly valuing skillsets.

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Oh, that goes without saying, no matter the task



Are we talking about you, or are we talking about admin support? Because I don't know what you can do, or how much you make.

Admin supports Billable.

Client > *

That's all I'm saying.

Sure. IT would love to do that. Of course, they don't have the budget to do that, since you didn't pay them for it.



Management are rarely engineers. Your company may be an exception. You'd be hard pressed to find an engineer in management (or anywhere else, for that matter) at a financial company, for example. Except maybe in IT. Secondly, no, they don't assist first. I've worked four different IT jobs, in 3 different industries, vastly different sized companies, and they're all the same: The frontline IT staff will generally get in trouble if they go too far beyond the stated SLA support on a regular basis. Yes, they make allowances for customer service purposes to a greater or lesser degree, but those exceptions have to be judiciously used.


So you don't use industry standard best practices for IT in your company, then? No SLAs or OLAs? The ITIL compliant shop is the norm. They call them "best practices" for a reason...they tend to work well.



Here, that would be a violation of privacy. Unless I report directly to you, or I report to someone who reports directly to you (on and on up the line), or you work for HR, you don't have access to my salary or contract information. You might be able to find my job grade, to get a ballpark figure, give or take 20%.


This is an interesting statement, considering you also said...


So are you the client or not?
Anyway, once again, it's an ITIL term. The person who needs assistance is the customer or client (the terms are synonymous). I prefer calling them "the user."




Wait, for telling htem to cal the switchboard I'd last 5 minutes and have a holier than thou attitude?
"Call the switchboard" = "**** you." Anything other than giving them the answer = "**** you."


I wouldn't give them another department's number, because I don't know the number. When I need another department's number, I call the **** switchboard.


Funny how people change online.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

If that's their job, then they're not "engineers." They're salespeople.

Arguably, yes, they are now salespeople. But they started out in engineering. And to be fair, engineering is a service, not a product, so you need to have a very, very good understanding of engineering to sell it.

Had IT Guy done it right.... he would have asked the VP of Operations to get in touch with the CEO and have the CEO let the IT Guy know that it was okay to stop working on his issue to assist the other guy.

When put that way... the average VP would back off. Or the IT Guy should have called the CEO and informed him that there was an issue with completing the requested project due to t a lower level of the executive staff trying to overstep the CEO's directive.

Either way that VP and the Trader were **** tools who should have been sacked

_________________
Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

You don't need more budget to work more than 40 hours a week. That's what salary is for.



Well of course. It's remarkably easy to find an engineer managing an engineering company.


So you don't use industry standard best practices for IT in your company, then? No SLAs or OLAs? The ITIL compliant shop is the norm. They call them "best practices" for a reason...they tend to work well.[/quote]

Agreements? No. Like I said, we have our roles, but everything is about the client.



Interesting. And annoying. Obviously, I can't just go snooping around, but quite often I need that information for proposals, overhead audits, etc.



No. The guy paying for the engineering service is the client.



I took you literally, obviously.



So call the switchboard for the kid. NOOOOOO, NOT MY JOB!!!!!!!!!!!



Eh, quit yer *****.

It never ceases to amaze me how much IT people, almost universally (except at our company) ***** about their jobs. Cry me a river.

Since the code wouldn't have been lost, that's a non-issue. The VP was in the staff meeting when the CEO directed the "programmer" to take on the responsibility to re-write the code - as one of his responsibilities - over the course of the week. Jerry, who assumed the "programmers" responsibility for the code, fixed the error inherent in it within the week.
I, and everyone involved know that the VP's actions, at most, would have cost the firm the cost of the "programmer's" salary over the course of five minutes, if that had been the "programmer's" only job. As it was, Jerry got promoted, a raise, and the firm saved 10k in the salary differential. The trade moved >$50k in two minutes. Assuming the market's movement is linear (which it isn't), the "programmer's" little cry of "it's not my job", cost the firm between $50-75k and I saved them an equal amount by being willing to do something that's "not in my job description".



I didn't even have to interview for the position, my actions told the firm that I was willing to do things that other people consider "not their job", which your "janitor" comment typifies. My credentials got me the interview, my willingness got me the job over other equally qualified (for all I know) applicants. If they are just finding out what your skill-set is during the interview process, that's a place that doesn't value my time. That position saw me get my Series 7 and 63, my my skills as an account administrator, trade administrator and entre into the land of six figure salaries. I'm glad I picked up that piece of crumpled up paper.

edit: Fixed quote tags

_________________
"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Sorry dude, the CEO would have told the "programmer" that he needed to get his *** down to the trading floor and fix the problem.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

You keep acting like we're talking about individual IT employees and not the department. Management needs the budget to either (1) pay for overtime, or (2) hire more people. Since you, the client department, didn't pay them, where are they going to get it?

IT is staffed based on the funding they get from the departments they support. That funding is determined by the internal corporate contracts that pay the department for its services. IT agrees to provide X services for Y payment. You, the engineer, decided you didn't need IT to support {application} because you didn't want to pay for it. Now you're demanding it. No, they can't just "work extra" to accomodate you. It costs money.


No doubt. But engineering companies are not really the standard in that, are they? They probably don't even employ the majority of the world's engineers. IBM, for instance, probably employs more engineers than your entire company, and they're not an engineering company at all.



Well, you're in an unusual and anachronistic corporate structure, then.


Usually, the engineer's employer is paying for the engineering service. Their clients may just be paying for a new bridge, or machine. They don't care about the engineering service. For example, IBM's engineers design microchips. IBMs customers buy microchips after they are put on the market. IBMs customers are engineers are completely isolated from each other.



Call the switchboard for...are you serious? You know every second I'm doing something useless like that, is a second someone who actually needs me isn't getting the support they need, because some idiot had me doing something that has nothing to do with me. Your business model costs a company more money. It isn't just the IT salary you're paying extra, it's the engineer who isn't getting support for a real issue because some jackass has them showing him how to point and click.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Then that is one **** retarded company. I have never seen a VP authorized to override the CEO of a company.

_________________
Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Which leads one to wonder why the CEO stepped outside of normal channels to directly request the IT Guy to do something in thefirst place? The only possibility any sane person would imagine in that situation is that the task they have been given directly by the CEO is the most critical and urgent of possible tasks. (It couldn't even happen here. We don't make exceptions for executives. It's actually occasionally used to test the helpdesk, an executive has called to get something done outside of normal procedures and dropped their title to hurry things along. When they were told they'd need to follow the same procedures as everyone else, they later gave the agent and his manager a commendation for sticking to procedures.)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

ds:As I've said before, it's not like the "programmer" was the CEO's personal IT guy, he had other duties in addition to this bug-fix.

Taly: If one had read what I'd written, they wouldn't wonder that at all. Nowhere did I state that it was "outside of the normal channels", nor was it "the most critical and urgent of possible tasks", as he had a week to do it while still doing what he needed to do day-to-day, as I've addressed earlier.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Ah, interesting.

We don't have anybody here that's not busy enough with their day-to-duties that they could take on such a project. People who write bug fixes are dedicated to solving problems with the systems they are writing fixes for. I would think your IT has staffing issues if you have people who have so little to do on a daily basis that they can fit in occasional major projects on the side. I could see that happening at my last job (very small company, only a couple thousand employees), maybe, but they'd still have needed time off their normal duties.

At just under 40,000 employees, my current employer has about half the number of employees as the entire Canadian Armed Forces (Army/Navy/Air Force), with more divisions and organizational struture. And we're the smallest of Canada's banks.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

What she said.

_________________
Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Code not lost does not mean code that can be salvaged.

So was he a programmer or was he a "programmer"? If the latter, why on earth was the CEO interested at all in his activities, and why would he be in a staff meeting with the CEO? Why is the CEO dictating tasks directly to members of IT? Does IT not have even a director, let alone a VP or CIO? So here's a firm that mismanages IT, and then members of such suffer for it? No wonder the machines have odd problems and the users can't push the power button themselves. Also, did Jerry figure out that he should market his skills elsewhere, as he was being underpaid? Did you further go out on a limb and explain to them how they could save even more by not being retarded? It sounds like trained monkeys would have been a perfectly valid solution! A user has a problem, rings a little bell, a monkey comes over and reboots his machine. And you don't even have to pay monkeys anything! Just think of the bonus you could have gotten for that!

It sounds suspiciously like the job you were interviewing for was entry-level, so what exactly were the credentials you could have had? Because I feel I must point out, again, if waste disposal is a deciding factor in the hiring process, you're either a janitor or somebody doesn't know how2hire. If the first guy they saw was a half-wit with OCD, they probably would have hired him.

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That's great, thanks for the marvelous insights.


I feel that I must point out again that my qualifications were more than adequate for the administration of accounts worth in excess of $600 million, they knew that because they had taken a look at my qualifications prior to the interview. Weighing in on what goes on in the real world usually requires acknowledging the way things work there.



I doubt that's true.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

So in other words you're misrepresenting the knowledge you actually have about the situation, and you wish I'd just drop it because you're uncomfortable. Grand.

You know that "again" would imply that you had mentioned it before, right? And you were administering these accounts yourself were you? Or were you the coffee-fetching peon in this particular position? Let's have some context, please.

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Nah, just don't care to deal with your insulting tone tbh.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Jesus, this thread... At IT in the .mil, if you go too far outside of what your job is supposed to be you can cause a lot of troubles. People take you for granted and they generally have no idea how your job works. They think it's **** magic. Problems can be that the workload isn't properly allocated, and you can create more work for yourself and you start to fall behind on what you're supposed to be doing. Work isn't properly tracked. And other things that aren't obvious to someone that doesn't do the job... Considering the number of users we have, if we went out of our way to help them all and be extra nice, we'd never get anything done, or done right.

The user is the enemy. They will lie, cheat, and steal and they don't two **** about what your priorities are. You are support, but there is a framework you should follow. The more you stay inside that, the better it is for everyone in the long run, even the users. They just don't know when they beg for you to do that one extra little thing and we have to say "no," it's for the greater good.

I won't even do favors for people I know, only for people in the Comm. Squadron.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The way I read it is he got fired because of his attitude, not because he "refused" to fix something. If he'd said something along the lines of, "I'm sorry, the CEO gave me this task personally so I figured that it's more important because we have other employees who can fix your problem while the other employees can't do what I'm doing." I doubt he would have been fired.

I doubt he was even aware at the time that happened that the computer problem was costing the company a shitload of money, or he would have fixed it. Honestly, the stress in these kind of positions has got to be immense. You have to be aware of everything at all times and always be thinking two steps ahead or you don't have a job.

Again - they don't need it. Admin is on salary, they don't get paid overtime. Most of our admin staff like to think their job begins at 8 and ends at 5. It ends when the work is done. If we have a task that needs someone to work overtime, whether its an engineer, IT or secretary, too bad. I don't need additional budget for this.



Again, yes they can - and no it doesn't.



Probably. But - that's not really important, is it? "Engineer" can be replaced with whatever profession is the focus of the company.



I dont' think so. I think you're just getting too focused on huge company structures. Remember, the majority of people work for small businesses.



LMAO. It depends on whether you are buying a product or a service. A bridge is not a "product", by the way. There's no bridge store. Client pays for engineering service, for design, construction management, etc. I can agree with you if you're buying microchips, but that's a pretty clear "product". They don't care how the product was made, they want a working product.



LOL Jesus, if you can't spare 30 seconds to help a kid out, no wonder you hate your IT job. If I were wound that tight, I'd probably hate my customers/clients too.

That's illegal here. Management and commissioned types are not obligated to get overtime. But any other salaried or hourly employee must be paid overtime if they work either beyond their salaried contract rate (typically 37.5 hours a week, although a company could contract you for 44 hours a week. Not that they'd get any takers unless they were significantly overpaying. There are always more IT jobs available, but competent IT staff, not so much.), or 44 hours (if they're hourly only) in a single week. Which is a very good policy.


I really doubt it. Small businesses are disappearing. Big corporations run everything.



It is faster even for them to call the switchboard, than for me to put them on hold, call the switchboard, find out the information, relay it back to them. Meanwhile, if I were working on the helpdesk, that 30-45 seconds is likely two more users who hung up because they didn't want to wait any longer, and then someone in management is getting their cornflakes pissed in because the "abandon rate" is too high.

There is always a queue for help. There is always legitimate work to do. Free time doesn't exist. Every person asking something stupid is impacting people with legitimate problems.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █