IT departments are BRATTY TEENAGERS

Re: I smell BS

It's a bit of attitude from both sides. Management and departments alike unwilling to concede that sometimes the other side knows better, or that alternative solutions may exist in another universe.

The company I'm working for, for example, is talking with another company about developing an application for monitoring their emissions. The department we're talking to is very pro opensource and pro Linux. Their IT department is very hostile to anything non-Microsoft.

This is unfortunate as it will make the development of the application a lot more expensive as I have to port code designed to run on a Linux environment, over to Windows. Luckily for them (and me), I try to write cross-platform compatible code where I can, and the particular piece of code we're thinking of using, has had _some_ testing on Windows, but has only really seen active deployment on Linux systems. I have faith it will work, but have no real contemporary evidence to back that up, thus there will be a good amount of debugging to do.

And of course, there's the complexity that comes with using a package that will probably require a full-time admin to keep on top of it, rather than an alternative system which so far has been chugging away for a number of other customers, largely with little or no maintenance.

We also have it from various companies, and the plethora of VPN software that gets used. A lot of it proprietary and Windows-based. A lot of it that conflicts with other VPN software. A lot of it that also is configured to block access to your local LAN -- making supporting the customer incredibly difficult. Its a customer's own IT department that sometimes can be our biggest opposing force to implementing and supporting systems.

It's a matter of choosing the right tool (software, hardware or otherwise) for the job, and it's in the evaluation of such tools, one must consider all options with an open mind.

I suppose it's down to the fact that they have very little human interaction, a lack of people and social skills having spent most of their lives locked up in their bedrooms playing on computers

and the fact that when working they never get praised (something you need to do with children) and only ever get told off for something going wrong.

Unfortunately when you get into this line of work it's part of the job description.

Re: 6 months ago I couldn't even spell architect now I are one.

"WTF is a 'Corporate Architect'(tm) ?"

In this context, a dude/tte who, in theory, designs corporate IT infrastructure from scratch. In reality, unfortunately, they are almost always either management shills pinching pennies, or delegaters trying to figure out who to fire after it all invariably goes tits-up.

"and why would I let one from a second-rate software company tell me how to run my business ?"

Simple answer ... You shouldn't.

Re: Trevor Pott

Actually I agree with this guy in almost every aspect. IT is not about computers, nor the software you choose. It's not about the configuration you use or which brand name you've tribally attached your self worth to.

Too many systems administrator forget the very reason we both investing in computers in the first place: because they can do something for us cheaper than paying a person, more accurately than paying a person, faster than paying a person or some combination of the three.

Risk management is a big element too. “It doesn’t have to be perfect every time.” This is proven by the mere fact that we still use humans to do anything. Humans are fallible; we accept a certain rate of failure by using them for a task. The same goes for computers. You have to look at the specific tasks that computer system is being engaged for and ask yourself exactly how much it is worth?

Do you buy the high availability with-added-blue-crystals version for that task, or will some old beater that needs a day’s worth of poking every year do? How sure are you of that?

It isn’t about the sysadmins, it isn’t about the tech, it isn’t about egos or glory or “new for the sake of new.” IT is about money. Specifically making more money than you invest into it. Without the business, there is no reason for IT to exist.

That said…

…most management are complete fucking morons who don’t understand the above any more than the jihadist sysadmins in love with their new shiny. They either fall into the camp of “demanding the impossible as soon as they read about it in a magazine” or “treating IT like a cost center and pinching every penny until they can’t do the job they are assigned properly.”

So while I agree with the dude in this article’s take on things – I’ve written articles and comments to this effect more than once – reality rarely allows this sort of focus to exist. Human nature simply gets in the way.

When management treats IT poorly, IT becomes defensive. The nerds become jealous of what little they have, and are loathe to expend resources to solve a problem, fearing that when they need resources to solve a larger problem they won’t be made available.

Systems administrators designing and implementing IT solutions in a fully management-integrated and business-aware fashion relies on a level of cooperation and trust between management and IT that exists only in the best run companies in the world. The chances are exceptionally high that you, and nearly every single one of my readers don’t work in such a company.

Therefore I believe it is far more relevant for to discuss coping strategies for dealing with terrible management than it is to discuss the theoreticals of systems administration in a unicorn factory.

If you work in a place where management have clue; congratulations. Cherish your job; it’s rare. The rest of the world has to deal with inadequate budgets, corporate politics, hostile management and worse.

Attitude adjustment on behalf of systems administrators can only go so far towards alleviating those issues. It must be something all parties engage in. You don’t do yourself any favours by being completely servile any more than you do by being overly aggressive and hostile.

By hey, in a forums where absolute polarisation and binary thinking is the norm, why examine shades of grey? There’s black and white to worry about!

Re: Teenager? More like pre-teenager.

I don't know. I think you're mixing CE and corporate IT up. My experience seems to be that most companies (including our governments!) seem to push their systems at least to the 6 year mark. At that point, entropy takes over and the hardware's rate of failure starts dictating replacement schedules.

Even with a lot of replacements happening now (that old Windows XP stuff is at the end, for most folks,) I find that a lot of companies are being pretty smart about things. They care about things like vPro. They want corporate stable models for their purchases; they might be starting replacement now, but they want to know they can still get the last round two years from now. They buy spares.

Maybe it’s a “large enterprise” thing? You’d have more experience in the 2500+ seat range than I do; down in the 25-1000 sat range, 6 year life seems to be about right. Maybe longer, as it’s at about 6 years that people say “I should replace that,” but it can take a while before that replacement actually occurs.

Phones and other CE devices however…they are on a rapid replacement schedule that I just don’t see with desktops and laptops.

So I am curious; where are you seeing this? Across which cross section of corporates? It is region or industry limited, or are you seeing it broadly?

Re: It's even simpler than that.

Not so black and white. Sometimes you just end up in such a poorly run company that yes, the rest of the company is at war with IT. IT can only drive costs down so far. Eventually, refusal to invest by management means that you reach the hard limit of what can be delivered.

In those companies, resources are usually pretty thin on the ground, and everyone jealously eyes everyone else, looking for spare coppers. No matter how servile IT acts, some workplaces are simply toxic for everyone.

While a truly toxic workplace is probably not the norm, the workplace where management and other departments are joined up, “on the same team” and understand their role in business is probably just as rare.

Most companies fall somewhere in between, and the efforts of systems administrators alone are not going to bridge to social and political gaps in management strategy.

Re: It's even simpler than that.

quote: "IT was developed as an outgrowth of the Accounting department. It's purpose was, and is, to support the company in doing business. Nothing more, nothing less."

Absolutely, initially the main use for IT was to help automate tedious fiscal tasks, and most IT managers initially were finance managers. Unfortunately that was 20-30 years ago, and "IT" now have to deliver and support systems for the entire company, not just Finance.

quote: "The IT guys need to remember why they are there, who signs their paychecks, and who pays for all the neat toys they get to play with."

Why we are here: the other departments need us to support and maintain their automation software (be it Sales/Marketing database, Order Management software, Logistics software, HR database, company email server(s), company file server(s) etc.)

Who signs our paycheques: Payroll. They sign everyone else's too, it's their job. :)

Who pays for our toys: a combination of the efforts of Sales, Marketing, Operations, Fulfillment/Logistics, and Finance, delivered to the company coffers, then sorted into budgets.

We (IT) certainly need to remember that we act as part of a cohesive whole, a gestalt entity. IT are not the only department to have issues remembering this though; Finance have a tendency to believe they are the centre of the company, as do Sales and Marketing. The point I usually hear made to emphasise the viewpoint is "without us, there would be no company" and I agree wholeheartedly with the statement. Without Sales (or Marketing), we get no money and the company tanks. Without Finance, we cannot usefully process or collect the money owed, and the company tanks. Without Logistics, we cannot deliver the goods and the company tanks.

Now consider your IT department turning off all the servers (and the phones, we always end up getting the telecoms as well) and leaving the building. Sales, Marketing, Logistics, Finance and pretty much everyone else in the company would immediately find they could not usefully perform their job role anymore, as everyone has got used to the level of automation that IT has enabled. We are equally as important as the other departments for the successful running of the company, and what we do these days impacts the entire organisation.

We're not just there to delete the viruses you get from browsing porn sites at home (on company kit), or to ensure you get a new iPhone and iPad every time Apple release a new one. We are as critical to the running of the company as any other department. Not more so, as some I've met in the industry believe. Just as critical.

It's just that investment in IT doesn't have as an immediate effect on the bottom line as more marketing spend, and so tends to get deprioritised except when looking to upgrade to the latest shiny (for this I'm including "new Oracle ERP suite that Finance wants" alongside "new iPad that the CEO wants", shiny can be related to automation software as well). This generally means IT start getting jealous of the budgets of other departments, spent on frivolous things like "advertising" and "product development", when we are positive that it would be better spent on a proper data centre upgrade that would result in less downtime and more capabilities for the end users. The board knows that all those things are essential to grow market share, but IT doesn't; we are now comprised of employees who've never worked for another department, and therefore don't properly understand the business end to end.

tl;dr - In my experience, insular thinking can happen in any department; it's not just us geeks that think we're the most important part of the company. For harmonious working conditions, everyone needs to remember that everyone's job is important in keeping the company running ;)

Re: How do BMC equate to

Yeah, I'd have given more value to this guys opinion if he didn't work for one of the worst software companies on the planet.

I've had BMC "solutions" foisted on me several times in the last 15+ years by architects who believe this type of claptrap and I've never encountered one that worked properly without a huge investment in time and money to make the software do what their manuals say it does, never mind the marketing blurb.

In fact, I'm still waiting for them to deliver a stable Patrol agent that doesn't fail silently so you don't know. That way I won't have to spend time and money putting in a secondary solution to monitor my "standard" monitoring solution.

Standards are only quick and cheap if they work, Mr Know-IT-All-Architect. Clean your own teenage bedroom before you start telling me how messy mine is.

Re: How do BMC equate to

I have had to use their Remedy hell-desk software (for which the company paid more than €100K) and can honestly say it's the most useless, broken, outdated, slow and contrary piece of shit that my poor hard drive has ever had the misfortune to support. And I once installed Sonic Stage.

I seem to recall that one of the user manuals has the database root password in it. It was just the default MSSQL root pass.

Re: In that case

@Magister

I take it you've met the vendors currently insisting their solutions are the best thing since sliced bread, then complain that we're not 'enabling' their product to integrate with our systems despite them leaving it to us to do all the bloody work, which, incidentally, we're paying them to do?

And yes, Management are as you say, except ours favours JFDI as their instruction.