I work in IT. I usually call my job "IT support" but I'm also technically the system admin, and network admin.
Today, I had someone ask me to delete a calendar for them in Outlook. It wasn't a shared or special calendar, it was literally just a calendar in their normal outlook.
Bear in mind, they didn't ask how to do it. They asked me to do it.
That's a skill issue right there. I'm not in the business of doing other people's work for them. Now and then I'll entertain the odd request of "how do I do x" and show someone how to get something done, mainly because it's a lot less effort than telling them that I didn't go to university for teaching, and all three ensuing arguments thereafter, because there's always arguments.
But this was straight up "do my job for me".
Lol, no, I have my own shit to do.
The number of people who think that IT is supposed to know how to use every program and fix everything within those programs is a lot. I've had several engineers, programmers, designers, accountants, executives of who knows what consistently ask to fix their work or how to do whatever it is. I always try to point them in the right direction or help but other people in my field hate even that because it sets a precedent that the next time they need help they think they can ask again.
If I knew all of their jobs thoroughly like they seem to think, I wouldn't be getting paid half what they are. I would need to be paid twice what they are, to support all of those positions in that way.
I'm a lot like you. For the most part, I try to look beyond the question being asked, and find the root cause. If the root cause is because of a skill issue, I'll direct them to the next logical resource. If it's not a skill issue, or I can't determine that it's a skill issue, then I'll continue to test until I can make that determination.
9 times out of 10, if I find a solution to make a thing work in a program, I'll share that with them, and let them take it from there.
A lot of the people I support are working in the finance space and my company has an entire support department for finance applications. I'll either bounce the problem off of them, or just direct them to the finance support team for guidance.
This wasn't either of those things. It wasn't even asking how. It was straight up telling me to do a thing for them, in a program they should know how to use. It's not a complex finance program or anything, it's literally Outlook.
"Google it"
One of the things I had to learn quick working in IT was when to amiably tell a user to go pound sand. I'm a professional with my own work to do, not your personal assistant.
Whoa, I wonder how you worded that. Was it a straight up no? Lol
The short version is that I explained that we have a company policy that we are support, not education.
This is not a support issue because no technical issue is preventing the user from getting this completed.
Some millionaire in my office: "Hey, Sanctus, what's my password for my computer again?"
Me, who can barely afford to fix my car: fights the urge to use a letter opener as a weapon
That’s a really long password no wonder they forgot it.
Got me, haha. Thanks for the laugh.
Those do make good passwords though. Had a company switch from 10 characters including special, caps, numbers lower upper requirements to 15+ with no requirements because it still would end up being harder to crack. Started using phrases where you could even put spaces, but in all lower case for me if was much quicker to type
Tangerine$45 is much harder for me to type than whatthefuckamidoinghere
I think it's because I have to pause to think shift 4, then hit 4 and remember if my fingers are still by the 4.
All just examples but the standard keys... Are all automatic for me because of use.
I don’t blame anyone for forgetting their password—it’s a dumb system, having to memorize 100 separate 16-digit randomly generated base64 codes that change once a month. However, I do blame them for not using a password manager, and I do blame them for making their problems other people’s problems.
However, I do blame them for not using a password manager
Managing the passwords in your password manager becomes a job in and of itself when you've got enough of them floating around. My office is on year two of trying to do automatic password rotation for the myriad of service accounts in our systems. Anything that's not Active Directory integrates is a headache. And even the ones that are have to constantly stay ahead of the Microsoft Updates curve or run into security problems of all sorts.
It would be cool if everything could be SSO, but you need to have a certain amount of faith in your OS to accomplish that.
I was against you until password manger. good save. I login to dozens of systems every day, I remember 2 passwords, all others are 16 character gibberish.
Your password is "giveMeFuckingRaise!1!1"
"Oh yeah, no wonder I keep forgetting it"
"Sorry, that's above my pay-grade."
The sheer volume of people I've encountered through numerous jobs that are on high wages but lack basic skills astounds me.
They have other skills you don't have, that are more important for those high paying jobs.
Like faking genuine interest in the shit their higher-ups blather on about, convincingly laughing at racist and misogynist jokes, backstabbing their peers when a position opens up, and doing the most demeaning tasks with a smile and a "thank you".
Don't forget rudely asking the flight attendant to bring another warm moist hand towel as I have spilled my pre-flight mojito.
"Soft skills"
I thought you'd go a different route and I was ready to fight. But yes. This sums it up pretty well. I quit my last job with a (roughly translated) "you're an idiot, go fuck yourself. I'm polishing up my vita" and it was SO great.
They have other skills
Press X to doubt
The people with the worst virtual meeting presences are the VPs and above. They expect us to shovel their shit. Like, buy a fucking mic and a light, pay for more than DSL broadband, and shut the fucking door so I can stop hearing whatever your teenage asshole kid is doing.
EDIT: FWIW managers at most levels aren't much better, they live by the example set by the superiors they so idolize.
I had a group virtual interview during the pandemic and saw someone take a bong toke, then found out they got hired for the job.
Sorry if you need to learn this, but compensation has little to do with ability or merit in a lot of place that need to screen share.
Also, ability to screen-share has little to do with the competencies that pay the bills on most places.
And screen-share knowledge is not some skill that is short in supply and high in demand. Every year tons of people graduate to fill those low level IT jobs. It’s simple economics, jobs that are easily filled are the ones that pay the least.
People here are delusional. They have been fed white lies by their parents and teachers that if they are smart and just work hard they get rewarded abundantly. It’s not how the world works.
I work on a team that teaches courses on how to use specific programs. I’m at job level 1. A job level 3 guy keeps asking me to schedule meetings with him so I can teach him how to use the specific programs so then he can do the job he was hired for and teach other people how to use these specific programs.
Sounds like you're doing a job level 4. Time to get paid, brother.
In my line of work your competence does not get you promotions, but who you know and how well you fill out standardized tests that haven’t been updated since the mid 90’s. I’d have to change industries haha
time to switch places.
Bruh, I'm not one for office drama, but I would recommend keeping records of that if no-one else knows he's doing that to you.
Oh no this isn’t unusual behaviour. In my time here I’ve found this is the norm on many teams. I’d say 60% of the teams I’ve worked on here are like this.
Why can't level 3 dude schedule a meeting with you? Instead of asking you to arrange the meeting
As someone who had to struggle in a meeting because I'd never shared my screen in Teams before and they put it in some weird place, I feel attacked
Microsoft: "Here, have some shitty arcane dysfunctional software."
Me: "Damn, this is hard to use."
IT Guy: "Damn, I can't believe you get paid to work here."
Also IT Guy: low whisper "Fuck, they moved the button again. This is going to take me a minute."
The amount of people who spend 0.12 seconds trying to figure shit out before throwing their hands up and saying "this is impossible, I can't find it" is wild. Every time I use a new program, I go through it with excruciating depth, changing settings and finding how to do things. It usually takes 5 minutes or less.
The people who are just immediately helpless are the ones being bitched about here.
I have an ongoing theory that every time you locate what you’re looking for in a Microsoft project, a random number generator determines if it will be moved, and where to
My god all these admin centers and their old and new versions. Four places to do any one thing and maybe one of them has documentation that’s up to date.
There are at least three locations to disable user accounts. Two of them require a setting of “True” and the third one “False”. Drives me mad.
Corporate crapware changing the layout every 3 months and "streamlining the UI" is by far my biggest annoyance.
It's not hard to find the camera button
It would take less time than the bitching
the giant share button at the top was too obvious?
Same, always used Google Meet, was forced to use teams. It took me a second to find the right button while rambling about it. Being a Mac I also needed to enable the permission and restart.
I haven't used Zoom in a while either, it would probably take me a second as well if it's not obvious.
I work in IT, and we recently hired a new "Engineer" at my company. I noticed on the form that he claimed to have extensive knowledge of Python, so I decided to meet him. The first question I asked was what IDE he uses, and he replied, "Anaconda." Before I knew it, he was referring to the entire computer as a "CPU" and struggled to solve simple issues on Windows. To top it off, he makes 30% more than I do.
(I work as a Level 1 Service Technician, and my boss is aware that I have experience with coreboot and GNU/Linux. I just got approval to bring my own setup with it installed. Although we work in a Windows environment, I can make it work.
I also funded and helped test a bunch of hardware for coreboot, with guidance from friends I have who are experienced in the field. However, I only make $55k per year, I'm hoping I can get a nice raise. It's just my boss and I as the two IT guys, so maybe there is potential.)
Same dude. I was hired as a level one even though I've been in the field off and on for about 15 years. My company just hired someone over me who hasn't worked in IT since the late 90s. If you ask him about anything he claims to have worked with it, even things like CardDAV which wasn't a thing until 2011. If you ask him any in depth questions he brushes them off without giving an actual answer and everyone just buys into his bullshit. It's crazy how many people will take you at your word if you're a straight laced clean cut white guy.
Tips for promotion
Even in IT I find that with each consecutive job that I get, my wage increases while my workload decreases. I'm literally being paid more to do less. I don't think it's the same for all these professionals but I feel that once most people reach a certain level, they mentally retire from learning new things.
Yes, networking skills are more valuable than service desk. It's amazing how many service desk folks have a chip on their shoulder because they never moved on.
I dunno, having worked both sides of the fence i would say whilst network skills are more valuable because the barrier for entry is higher, in that you need apecialist knowledge, the general knowledge a service desk tech is not to be underestimated (im talking those techs that actually fix and attend jobs as opposed to those on the phones)
The number of problems a tech can fix and the amount of work they get through can be astounding. sure, it's something anyone can be trained to do, but to say it has inherently less value, i dont agree. i do networks in a hospital, and the number of people who appreciated the work i did when i worked the desk is vastly larger than the number of people that even know i exist now.
It felt alot better getting a bit of software working or replacing hardware, or recovering someones emails etc that got a doctor or a nurse working again and lowered their stress levels and made them smile than it does to upgrade cisco call manager from version 1 to version 1.1...
I agree to an extent that its not harder to work the service desk, but i dont think you should look down upon them. We all have an important role to play....
Except execs... they can fuck off.
I had basically the same experience at my last job. I worked my way up on the service desk and after a few years basically everyone in the IT side of things new my name. I probably had more general knowledge of how to get things done in that place than just about anyone. Obviously I didn't have access to do a lot beyond general troubleshooting myself but I'd assisted with enough issues to know who to talk to and what info they'd need. Eventually I moved to an app support team and I hated it because it was more meetings and talking to vendors and trying to coordinate shit with other teams. I went from basically a constant stream of doing shit for people and getting their gratitude in return to waiting weeks on end to even get simple tasks through. My self esteem nose dived because I felt like I wasn't accomplishing anything and all I got from others was requests for updates on things I was waiting on other people to do.
networking skills are more valuable than service desk
Only true until you drop your laptop. Then the value of that service desk work skyrockets.
Would be very cool and good if IT folks weren't constantly in a dick-measuring contest and could see the forest for the trees. Maybe we're all getting underpaid, relative to the suits six floors up, and we'd do well to stand by each other instead of bickering over who works the hardest.
You can tell you self whatever you need to hear. I can find a good service desk guy easy. Good execs are hard to come by despite the reddit/lemmy circle jerk.
I guarantee you they know nothing about setting up a home network much less configuring a router.
Open and admin window in on windows and do a deltree on C:\windows\system32
Profit
I've had corporate VPs ask me to PDF Excel files because they don't know how.
Someone with twice your salary might have another million and one things to try and remember, rather than the thing they only need to do once or twice a year.
Yep. Especially when you've been using computers for 40 years, as I have. Do you know how many times MS (or any tech company) has moved each and every button? Do you have any idea how many times something as simple as saving a document has changed since I started my career? Over the years, I have saved documents to at least six different types of physical media including the local hard drive. Then I had to start saving to a network drive, then a different network drive, then a cloud drive, then a different cloud drive. I have worked with Linux, Windows, Mac. Techniques and keyboard shortcuts I learned in the 80s and used for decades get changed/dropped/redesigned. I have had to go back and alter little programs I wrote years ago because the corporate file system was redesigned for the 25th time and now all my file paths have to have forward slashes instead of backslashes for the code to run... When I ask a less experienced colleague where to find the screen share button, it is because I know they have only had to relearn its location 1-3 times, so their memories won't be all jumbled yet.
To me it's more to do with mentality. Most of the people earning that much are completely full of themselves, "I'm a problem solver I get things DONE" kinds of people. To have them come to someone they probably don't see as such for a task that is imminently solvable by just looking at the screen for 30 seconds, or typing a quick search is at best off-putting.
