Barrier to Web 2.0 — IT Departments 328
jcatcw writes "Wikis, social networks, and other Web 2.0 technologies are finding resistance inside companies from the very people who should be rolling them out: the IT staff. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in London had to bypass IT to get Web 2.0 technologies to end users. Both Morgan Stanley and Pfizer are rolling out Web 2.0 projects, but it took some grass roots organizing to get there."
Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Spin (Score:5, Insightful)
"IT departments are wisely refusing to spend uneeded man hours and money on technological buzzwords that will not help, and will likely hurt, the business. Management foolishly decided to override them instead of listening."
Maybe I'm just jaded.
Question (Score:5, Insightful)
sPh
Smoke and Mirrors ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the MBA doggies had to clean up their own poop, the IT staff would be all in favor of the new projects. It's easy to be cavalier when you aren't paying the bills with YOUR time and effort.
Re:Too bad! (Score:3, Insightful)
The end user tends to want shit like Webshots or Bonzi Buddy too. Just because they clamor and whine for something that looks flashy and easy, doesn't mean that they should get it.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Web 2.0 is about 80% hype, 10% mature technologies and 10% immature technologies. Marketers are pushing hard for this (through their loyal minions the columnist and the tech reporter), but I still think when the guys who maintain all of this are saying "Whoah, let's think real hard about this", someone ought to listen. Blaming IT is simply shooting the messenger.
People are clueless... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too bad! (Score:5, Insightful)
I see two possible cases here:
1) The IT department is incompetent.
2) Some manager who wants to be able to write that he "synergized the business using new paradigms in a Web 2.0 world" in their resume.
I'm betting on the latter. But thats probably because I'm used to it.
IT Dept and the cost-control mentality (Score:4, Insightful)
If the IT department in your company is an obstacle for your job, realize that it's because the people that control the purse strings for IT (e.g., the CEO, COO, CFO, et al) don't understand that IT can provide a huge opportunity to boost productivity, revenues, and profits. But until someone goes to them with a solid business case and demonstrable ROI for whatever tech du jour, the C-level suits and the IT dept will stay in cost-avoidance (vs. opportunity-seeking) mode of management.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
There's work, and then there's nightmares.
Years ago, the ISP I worked for was sold, and the new guy didn't like the web server we were using, and insisted on moving over to Windows and IIS. I strongly urged against it, at least right away, and not without properly assessing the issues.
Of course, tons of Perl scripts broke, pissing off our hosting customers. There were difficulties in just about every area, and I spent at least a couple of weeks of very long hours finally bringing everything together, only to have the most outrageous vulnerabilities surface, and a bunch of the sites we hosted being defaced.
You can call me lazy if you like, but you're damn right that I don't like jumping into things just because it's the kewl, sexy new way of doing things.
Re:Too bad! (Score:5, Insightful)
One example: wiki based support. I find that people are, for many reasons, willing to help others. Some may like showing how much they know. Some are altruistic. And so on. Now, let's say you have an application that gets used by 25000 people and a development team of 15 people. You probably don't have time to support the application to the extent it needs. Enter a wiki. If you have a wiki, that can at least minimize the questions / requests sent to your team, leaving you to focus on enhancements, future looking stuff, etc. Using a wiki, you can actually get your user base to at least partially support itself.
Sure, a social networking site *might* not be the right thing for you F500 company's intranet. But a wiki might be just what you need.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Our problem is that we're kept so busy because they've laid everyone off that we don't have time to get fluent in the specifics of every technology we'd like to implement.
And if we put something out there, since we're "Enteprise", it has to basically be perfect the first time out or whoever is in charge of us this week will end up torching the moving the project to another group to mis-run.
It's not "IT" that's your problem... its the executives and management.
Who works for whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Support the elements of the company that make money.
That's it. That's our job. If the elements of whatever company we're working for wants a "Web 2.0" app, instead of immediately jumping on our pedestals and saying, "Whoa there, mister! That's insecure and NEW! Put that thing away," we should instead be asking ourselves, "Hey, what problem are they trying to solve with this, and can we find a better solution?" When the employees are using Gmail or Facebook for inter-office communication, it means we're not doing our jobs, not because we're not locking down outside communication paths but because the communication paths we're providing are inadequate. When our customers start firing up MSN Messenger without our permission, we should be asking ourselves what we can use that's better, more secure, and easier to manage in an enterprise. When our customers come up to us and say, "We're tired of chasing Word docs everywhere - we're getting a wiki to manage our information", we should be looking at their problems and figuring out if a wiki is the best solution, or if they really just need a document management system.
Get it? WE are at the disposal and discretion of our coworkers, NOT the other way around.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
Darn it, it's true. Even the best of the best can't always support every browser, and my absolute least-favorite thing in the world is account for esoteric browser inconsistencies in Javascript and CSS. I cannot see myself building a "Web 2.0" site for anyone for any reason.
For one, web pages that output HTML with little or no Javascript and which are built in such a way as to need very little browser-tweaking keep me sleeping well at night. Secondly, I don't see that it adds a ton of value in most places. It just makes your back button behavior wierd. I'll admit that eBay's new interface is cool, as are Slashdot and Digg. OkCupid and Facebook, on the other hand, would be just as usable (if not more so) without it, but of course they're doing it to capture the attention of young neophiles. I don't know either way, but my gut says this demographic is not incredibly important to companies like Morgan Stanley either way.
Interesting (Score:1, Insightful)
Perish the thought.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you just proved your parent's point: that other divisions generally do not have the same understanding of how much work is involved in a project like this, and thus cannot accurately allot time, money and manpower.
10,000 member IT department. (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow! 10,000 member IT department!! That's a bloody legion of IT workers!
No wonder they had resistance to change, their bureaucracy is simply huge. Are the 10,000 geeks serving 10 million workers? A huge company that must be!
--
P.S. It looks like this web page changed its text when I loaded it a 2nd time. What's up with that? It think someone edited it.
Re:Spin (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it happens every day. And i understand that Ajax/javascript might be in a lot of the apps that are being blocked by IT departments, but i think it's a healthy exercise to make the clarification between the technology and the theory.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, and the "profit" side is busy hiring drones to churn out more TPS reports and all their plans end with "and the consulants will build x y and z." In IT WE build xyz. There's a difference "work" and "getting shit done." A good IT department does the latter.
No matter though, these articles are just springboards for people to complain about their companies IT department. Enjoy the bitchfest.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too bad! (Score:2, Insightful)
(Of course, you're going to blame IT when they try to do proactive mantainence, expecting them to work in the weekend when you wouldn't consider it yourself. But then you'll blame IT when something breaks too.)
The mentality you have is that of a 'client' with IT being the 'vendor' -- the catch is that a real vendor will *charge you* for the services; you ask something tricky and they keep ratcheting up the price. Internal IT depts don't have that option; and you simply won't believe the hidden costs behind implementing a new piece of technology.
The correct attitude to have is everyone on the same team. You work *with* IT, you don't treat them as a mere vendor.
Keeping things working is nowhwere near as easy as you think on things as complex as computers. You do your best, but some user will bitch and moan because the updates you've pushed out to every machine three
Re:Spin (Score:3, Insightful)
A case in point is Wiki technology, which manages to be both overhyped and extremely useful. On the one hand, you have snake-oil types who push elaborate (and usually pretty buggy) wiki engines that are supposed to replace every enterprise application on the intranet. On the other hand, you have nice simple wiki implementations that improve collaboration and cooperation with a very low training overhead.
Re:Spin (Score:4, Insightful)
Management is not somehow magically more competent than IT, just because their management. Read The Dilbert Principle for more details.
Re:Absolutely true (Score:3, Insightful)
Because that IS the way it SHOULD be. Anything else is a mistake.
No Brainer. Shows GNU Demand is User Driven. (Score:3, Insightful)
What, the same people who put Windoze on desktops and increasingly into the server room don't like Wikis and other very cool free programs? Shocker. There are plenty of exceptions, like the CIA, but Windows inertia is a good part of this problem and established IT departments are something that have to be circumvented to get things done. The solution is radical removal of the problem. Doing that removes all sorts of networking problems and frees up staff for productive use. It's sad that users have to push this kind of change onto the IT departments instead of the other way around.
Re:Who works for whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
The single most important thing we can do in our IT jobs is to ask why?
"We need to buy some web 2.0. How much will that cost?"
"Why do we need it?"
Note that the answer is NOT "no", it is NOT "that's new and insecure." It is, to be precise, "what do you want to do and how will this technology help with it?"
The answer to so-called web 2.0 is almost invariably no because it consists of:
47% rehashed ideas.
51% marketing and management consultant bullshit.
1.6% new ideas that solely benefit vapid, angst-ridden, insecure teens.
0.4% worthwhile advances.
That means that one time in 250 that someone comes to you with a 'web 2.0' idea, it's going to be worthwhile. Actually, that number seems high. Oh well, we'll leave it.
Most of this crap is either old shit in a new wrapper, or complete self-serving hyperbole. Our jobs as professionals is to make that decision (or at least help in making it), and NOT waste valuable company resources (time, money, people, equipment) on stupid pointless ideas.
When people are using gmail or facebook for inter-office communications, we shouldn't first assume that we're doing our jobs poorly. The first thing we must ask is why. Are they doing this because the existing communication paths are inadequate? Maybe so--then we need to act. On the other hand, maybe it's because if they can justify using gmail for "work-related purposes," they can then keep flirting with that S&M submissive in Minnesota who just happens to have gmail open as well.
In fact, you nailed it perfectly in this sentence:
That's precisely it: we should be bringing our expertise to the table and finding the right solution for them--proactively if possible. The real problem is that we are so often presented with a fait accompli, "we have decided on this totally inappropriate technology to solve a problem we don't have", that after a while the automatic answer is, "No. Now prove me wrong or go back to your desk."
Reading between the lines (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the IT department would have prefered to do their job (enterprise IT) instead of building something just to use the tools.
However, he said he worked closely with IT team members to convince them of the merits of Web 2.0, which led them to implement Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) technologies, a key requirement for building and supporting Web 2.0 tools
He didn't stop nagging until they told an intern to cobble something together and paint the relevant acronyms in two feet letters on it.
Once IT was convinced of the value of Web 2.0, he said, the organization was "really good at making sure that [systems] worked really well and didn't break, but they weren't really good at making sure
So, people don't use the new-fangled stuff. Obviously this is the fault of IT, and not because they don't see the need.
Carson noted that the company now has about 80 Web 2.0 projects under way, including an effort to create social networks for its clients.
Now we have 80 unused projects. Even our customers refuse to use theirs so far.
During the education process, Carson said he also had to find a manager that would require the use of a Web 2.0 tool for a specific project.
He had an hammer and was looking for a nail. A screw would probably work as well.
That would help spur employees to use the new tools, he noted. The effort also faced cultural resistance from some users clinging to the use of e-mail and other traditional tools rather than switch to new Web 2.0 collaboration tools, he added.
So, with hard work he managed to have something implemented that nobody else thought necessary. Now he is looking for a way to make the users use it.
Stop the madness (Score:1, Insightful)
People are building abstraction layers on top of technologies that are best off standing alone only to reintroduce the same set of problems solved by the very things they were abstracting.
Web 2.0 is to me is a rediculous and sorry joke. Hello WTF do you think the Internet is for if not to communicate ideas with each other? Information was a hell of a lot easier to find and process when everyone used *usenet* for chatting with each other. Now with all the phpbb's data that can be used and archived gets lost when some mod gets a wild hair or a disk drive crashes. How is wading through commercial upon commercial just to find what your looking for or using a cheap textbox vs a real editor online any sort of an improvement??
Collaboration tools are used to colloborate and share ideas they are not new and have been around since people first started linking computer systems togeather even before the Internet ever existed.
Marketeers and those who follow them are just not confusing people but unwittingly doing real harm to the network and innovation in the process.
Re:Spin (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who works for whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, you should also realize that MY problems and issues are not YOUR problems and issues. If I find something a barrier to communication, but you do not, it does not necessarily mean that it is not. It means that you're willing to accept a problem that I am not willing to accept. If I should have to accept it anyways, because of security or other resource considerations, so be it. But if the major reason that you're willing to work with the status quo is because you don't have the interest in learning something new, that's not acceptable.
A few years ago, IM in the corp world was regarded as dangerous, and redundant to email. However, when examined closely, it does serve some advantages, and now at least in my workplace it is an invaluable communication tool that we all use daily. Since the need was presented and examined, IT also developed solutions to the problems of the tech as it stood, like security enhancements and logging. But in the end, we get to keep a tool that we need and use, and IT is happy because they have satisfied their requirements.
In short: vi is not for everyone. Some folks like MS Word. If you respond to a request for a Word install with "Why? vi should be good enough for you, it's good enough for me" you're still failing to see the whole picture.
Web based communication/applications (Score:3, Insightful)
As an IT guy I am rolling out web based stuff. I have found:
- A lot of canned stuff (even some OSS apps) just aren't a fit for what we do (most businesses aren't a one size fits all business).
- Many of the hottest things to do are not all that flexible when it comes to integrating with other apps or data conversion, web 2.0 integration is cool as long as you keep with one co.'s products (assuming you can find one that can offer it all).
- I'm very leery of the SAAS companies - if the service company takes a dive all my work and data goes with it and then I'm really screwed (so most stuff will be hosted in-house).
- Those I can't I am reworking what we do (part from modified code other parts from scratch). A lot of this is truly very flexible and powerful, but compared to what tools I used before it is surely more complex (in a good sense) and takes time to get it right.
- Nothing is stopping you from rolling out a web app tomorrow but until you have your business (more importantly your data) on it it just will be a struggle in the transition. I find it takes a lot of work (or just time) to get to the tipping point where it becomes commonplace. When it does, it's great - but it surely doesn't happen overnight (unless that's the same time you start your business).
They're looking for a free ride! (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens is these people think that there's some new miracle computer technology that magically solves their problems. When they find out that behind the shiny new Flash/JavaScript/ActiveX user interface they've really just got yet another information storage and retrieval system like their old one and making it useful requires real work by real people, they stop being interested because, heck, they could have done real work with the LAST system.
Where it gets really fun is when just enough work goes into the new thingy that the low-level office droids end up using it regularly and can't live without it BUT upgrading and maintaining it to sane levels doesn't get funded because the shiny exciting part that appeals to management is long gone.
It's *all* just another symptom of management's love of short-term/free-ride thinking. I'm surprised we don't hear more about these same people losing money to perpetual motion machines.
Stop whining or make a business case for it (Score:3, Insightful)
Listen, this isn't 1996 anymore, thank God. Unless you can make the case that we will recoup the implementation, training, and operating costs in productivity gains, it isn't going to happen. This is what is known as a BUSINESS CASE. Businesses exist to make money, not to coddle and pamper you. Did you mistake your cube farm for the Hilton?
You should be thankful you have Web 1.0. Because if it weren't for the fact that Java is most cost effective to maintain and operate, you would still be doing data entry and form processing on COBOL terminal screens.
And talk about insane, if you have so much free time at work that you think we should deploy a social networking system for you, you have got another thing coming. Which would you prefer? We can either cut you down to 20 hours and drop your benefits, or we can just reassign your job to an existing employee who is interested in working in exchange for monetary compensation?
NO WONDER the economy is in a slump. Do you think your counterparts over in India have the time to whine about lack of social networking software on the job? No, that's why they're taking your jobs.
IT department is not IT department (Score:2, Insightful)
You (PP&GP) are both right, because the IT department people are just that people. Some are morons some not.
Where I worked before we had a UNIX network (most servers running Solaris) but my department had a Windows subnetwork for several reasons. And that was the pain in the ass for the IT people (mostly security related problems). And I could fully understand them.
But now I'm working in a pure Microsoft faculty, I mean everything is Microsoft - really everything. And don't get me started on all the problems here, disk space, email, network, name it we had it in the last 14 months. But the point is, this is the will of the IT department. All problems are of course the fault of the user (which is really bullshit, believe me). And they block every change - even the most reasonable. I mean a lot of users are programming in Prolog, are using Emacs, write their papers in LaTeX, use Perl, and... and... and... - why Windows?
I know users can be annoying but not every PEBKAC is really a PEBKAC. In the first job users where the problem - in the second job I assure you it's the IT department and they are shooting the messenger.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the kool aid, man.
The other side (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really not that difficult a concept. Has anyone tried saying "please" and "thank you" to any of these folks? Or tried to find out what they do with their time? I'd bet you a paycheck that they're so busy putting out fires that idiot users or executives (but I repeat myself) are setting that they don't have TIME to do anything else. If you treat IT half as badly as it sounds, I think you're lucky they haven't dragged you from your car yet.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
We try to be responsive to users, but there's only so much time in a day, and when a user refuses to read the online documentation on how to clean up their roaming profile for the 10th time, and just want's IT to do it then they need to be a little patient and lock their machine rather than logging out till we can do the cleanup.
When we discussed the major database + client update and whether we would do it for v2008 or v2009 and agreed on v2009 version, don't be suprised that we balk at a sudden "How much work would it really take to jump into the 2008 version?" with something like "We could get on that about when the 2009 version comes out".
Then you have the people who complain about being unable to install software when our policies are clear that they need to run it past their supervisor first and then submit a request to finance + IT for funding and install. (Not entirely our policy, money is an issue) No, we aren't going to make you a local admin. Bonus points for realizing the requested software is already installed on the machine anyway!
Then there's the set of users who don't understand Scope of Support, I.E. you can use your personal laptop if you want, but we can't put software on it for you and we will not fix it for you. Except for the special cases where management decides we can and we will...
Somewhere in here we actually need to look at Vista, EL5, Server 2003/2008, replacing edge netgear switches with HP managed switches oh and working in concert on some things with another unit plus about 50 things I don't know about.
Lastly, what were these "Side Projects"? How do you think IT figures out if a new product will help you or not (or were you looking for a "There's this product I'd like to read about and maybe play with for an hour. I don't rightly know if it's going to be useful or not as I haven't done anything yet but wanted to ask permission to find out if I need to ask permission to do a test run with it.")?
I'm not saying IT should not be a service group. I am saying that there is often more things going on then just the website and it might take a little while to update. Especially if we recommended a Wiki so *you* could do the updates and you decided that was a bad idea.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually, they came on board (Score:4, Insightful)
- Hey, could you install some MediaWikis with capacity to five thousands access per minute by friday? I read it's super simple and light, just as Web 2.0 is supposed to be, so it should be very easy to do!
And the "boring IT guys" replied:
- You know we can't, we need to deal with all other emergency priorities you set last week about mail and the new Vista boxes. Besides, it's simple to install in one single machine for amateur use, it's complicated to prepare it for the security and load we'll need.
- You IT guys can't deal with changes. You complicate everything. I'll have a smart consultant friend to come over, install it for a few thousand bucks and hand the maintenance over to you.
- Gahhh...
Weeks later, she gave an interview boasting her boldness in "bypassing IT to get Web 2.0 technologies to the group's end users":
- IT started to realize it was happening without them anyway. They weren't interested until they started to get multiple requests from around the business. Eventually, they came on board.
The "boring IT guys" couldn't be interviewed. They were overwhelmed by client's support requests of system configurations, security alarms, the same old email problems and configuring tens of new servers with load balancing.
Next on "The Daily Buzzword Bugle", the folksonomy is being slowed down by the users.
Re:IT department is not IT department (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Its frankly laughable that you suggest the IT group shouldn't be running exterior services and suggest an external web group should work 'with them', web dev should be under the oversight of IT managers.
"IT" does not mean HELP DESK.
Cheers.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:2, Insightful)
It can be hard to separate that your systems and the services are indispensable,
from the fact that people who run them are not. Sadly we IT geeks can be replaced. I've literally had business
users who refused to do anything manually when their systems were down, even when they had moved from the
previous system or a manual process months before. It didn't matter; they would rather wait.
The magic for us geeks is in creating systems so useful that we appear to be equally invaluable. Bad examples
of this are people who "own" one system and refuse to ever document or share. Good examples are people
who build systems so incredibly, intuitively, awesomely awesome the users demand encore after encore.
I prefer to be in the second camp.
Obstructionist IT department just spawn mini-IT departments sooner or later. That's been happening since
Ken Olsen labeled his computers "lab equipment" to get around obstreperous mainframe priests.
We are very proud of the fact that the internet will route around damage. It can be humbling
but should never be forgotten your users will route around YOU sooner or later if you cause
them too much grief.
In my humble opinion the difference is in having rules for a reason, and having rules for rules sake.
Both are right. (Score:1, Insightful)
I can see users wanting to use wikis and social networking, and if the users want it, IT should do it. I suppose in some companies the corporate structure makes it impossible or unwieldy, but IT is a support structure -- they can formally note that some request is useless, but if it has much demand should do it anyway.
On the other hand, there's absolutely NO business for people to tell IT "do this with Ajax". NO! IT should be treated as a utility -- people can request they want an app that DOES something, but should have no business specifying how it's done. They simply should have no say if the app uses AJAX, Perl or C CGI, Ruby on Rails, PHP+MySQL, or even some unholy mash of Visual Basic, ASP, and Cobol. I don't tell my (cable company) ISP "Hey, you should get an all-IP backbone. Oh, and I don't know what brand of routers you have, but dump them and get Ciscos instead. KByethx." I don't tell Verizon Wireless that they should ditch the (I think) Motorola, Lucent, and Nortel phone switches, and buy all Nokia switches. IT should essentially be a utility, providing the computing needs the customers (rest of the company) need. But they shouldn't be told how to do it.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
now lets see here, gmail, facebook, victoria's secret, itms, youtube and the like
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you have the people who complain about being unable to install software when our policies are clear that they need to run it past their supervisor first and then submit a request to finance + IT for funding and install.
But this only breeds the inverse battle: "I'm looking for an app that does X and will save us money, but I need to install 4 or 5 different trials." Which is, of course, a perfectly justified use of time.
Lastly, what were these "Side Projects"? How do you think IT figures out if a new product will help you or not....
Hey that's a softball. You arrange for (and contract in) 2-4 hours/week of dedicated continuous/ongoing training time. You explain that the work you do is evolving so quickly that they can either send you to an expensive week-long seminar every year or that they can give you 2 hours/week to "study other stuff". If they don't understand this mentality and logic, then you are clearly working for the wrong people, it's time to find a new job.
Then there's the set of users who don't understand Scope of Support & When we discussed the major database + client update
Your point is well-heeded, yeah, users aren't always the greatest clients. And to make matters worse, you're supporting a setup that you are often incapable of testing (new acct. software?) and you're supporting software that you didn't write (e.g.: bad roaming profiles). And when nothing is going wrong and you're doing your job correctly, then nobody seems to notice and they wonder what you're doing.
What's actually going on here is that most bosses don't appreciate what's involved in good IT administration. This stems from the fact that they don't understand any of it, it's all just voodoo magic to them. Of course, basically every boss has dealt with voodoo charlatans, so they end up with very little trust in the actual magicians. The real problem here is two-fold, it's not just about mastering the details of IT, it's about PR work crossing with IT work. Good system admins must also be PR specialists, they have to be able to communicate correctly with the managers they encounter, they have to be able to breed trust and generate contracts of understanding with management.
And let's face it, the big problems you're talking about stem directly from that seed. Most IT admins yell and bitch about [l]users and shitty bosses and romp on the boards b/c "no one else gets them". But they're completely failing to acknowledge that the very source of their problems is their own inability to meaningfully communicate complexity to both users and management. If you can't do this, take a course from someone who can. You spent 2, 4 (6, 8?) years learning to operate/program/manage/debug/troubleshoot computers with hours of classroom and personal time spent on some of the most obscure pieces of knowledge. If you can't be bothered to take a few months to really learn how to communicate, then you deserve all of the shit flung your way.
Re:The other side (Score:5, Insightful)
What am I spending about 8-10 hours of my 40 hour work week on lately? The powers that be decided that they could fire the part-time student work-study that we used to have to do odd IT jobs, and now, I manage 30-odd card-swipe door locks, which a monkey could do, and which are a huge time sink, considering they're spread out across 3 buildings among 5 square miles, and everyone wants them updated at least three times a week. So, I have to cart one of two different laptops to each physical key card lock and update them.
If I don't get around to moving your Laserjet printer from computer A to computer B, configuring the cups server, and reconfiguring all other 9 computers in your project lab to print to the new server today, it's cause I'm freaking busy. If I can't figure out why your mouse doesn't refocus on matlab on your home linux box when you SSH into the cluster and display the graphical component locally, I'm sorry. If I can't get your bleeding-edge hot off the assembly line wireless card to work in any of [fedora core 5 | fedora core 6 | ubuntu | Centos 5.0] with several different kernels and everything from the stable to the nightly build of NDISwrapper, and the best I can do is that it works *most of the time*, and only causes a kernel panic *sometimes*, I'm sorry. If I can't find an unused room for your new multimedia lab, move 8 powermacs across campus, set them up, get the networking people to install and activate network ports (after getting the paperwork pushed through the financial people), and set up all your software by the time you teach class on Wednesday, when you tell me Monday afternoon, and especially when I had sent out emails in freaking JUNE asking what needed to be done for the upcoming fall semester, sorry - I'm only human.
Honestly, I know a lot of IT staff are lazy control freaks, but come on - some of us are spinning our wheels trying to move as fast as we can, while you all are pulling us in 40 different directions. We're expected to be master of all trades, and that takes time and effort. And I don't respond well to insults, questions of ability, yelling, or last-minute-emergencies-that-could-have-been-prev
~Will
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
What if that refusal was due to the janitor having no broom and no budget to purchase one, or the secretary having no way of passing messages on or simply no time to answer the phone due to workload?
Rather than simply firing people who don't do what they're told when they're told, perhaps it would be better to work out *why* that is the case. Then of course if they're just be obstructive, then fire them.
Never forget, though, that IT departments in many cases are overworked, understaffed and under-resourced. Also never forget that as (supposedly) experts in a field, sometimes it is their duty to say "no, we can't do that/do it this way because of this, but how about this instead?".
Re:The other side (Score:3, Insightful)
I have over 10yrs at a college that is mostly a Windows shop but plagued with the many of the same issues you stated. My first few years were doing desktop and departmental server stuff like yourself. Then I moved over to the infrastructure type stuff taking care of the enterprise servers, LAN, WAN, Active Directory, email (Exchange), firewall, VPN, DNS, DHCP, etc. Add on to that a variety of apps (WebCT, fund-raising app, custom apps, etc) that just get dropped in your lap. Some of these apps require quite a bit of babysitting in addition to normal maintenance.
In order to gain some sanity we have *tried* (with some success) to require that new systems/apps include a budgeted position. A few yeas ago the powers that be decided it was time for an imaging system. Well we (IT) said no problem just give us another staff position so we can dedicate them to it. That project had enough bigwigs behind it that getting a new position wasn't really a problem.
[edit - I had a really long rant about our history with WebCT but I cut it down to just this]
We weren't as lucky with WebCT. We are still helping babysit that 800 LB gorilla. What was a collection of PERL scripts with a simple install/patch/upgrade is more. Nobody wants to take ownership of it now that it is so widely used and really really needs a dedicated person with tech skills.
Like I said before, people tend to trivialize the amount of work it takes to do something if they aren't the ones doing it.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
I work in a university setting. The head of my last department came and gave me a pep talk that included the phrase "any faculty can do the job that you do, if they just bothered to take the time to do it." I left within 3 months. The department I work in now knows that isn't true.
Cult of Amateurs (Score:3, Insightful)
Found the book to be an interesting take, especially when he talks about an experience at an O'Reiley event with folks talking about "Web 2.0" and how it was going to change everything.
At any rate, I hear a lot about "We want a web 2.0 website" without people having a clue what that means. Some get damned irate when I say, "That's just a buzz word, what do you want it to do?" Most of the time their idea of web 2.0 is going from an HTML static site to one based around Joomla or some other CMS or they need some type of support ticket solution installed.
I don't tend to get into buzz words, my question is always straight forward: "What the hell are you trying to accomplish?" Then, "Okay. Here is Option A, B, C. My recommendation is A because:..."
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop firing people and grow up a little bit. IT doesn't "think", it works on mandated processes so that the people who work there can be seen as easily replaceable cogs by the people who put them there. If you have ever had anything to do with a "mission critical" system in a large corporation you would know the "IT department" can be extremely cooperative when the board of directors are involved. Like I said I am a developer and see that as a different task to "the IT department", I have never worked in "the IT department" but IMHO it looks like an underpaid and thankless job.
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
As for why IT departments are slow to adopt Web 2.0, it's partly the realization that it's mostly hype; and I think a large part is the fact that this is yet another set of technologies which they need to get comfortable with before they consider supporting them. Also, they probably want to wait a bit and see what problems shake out. New technology is fun, having to implement and support new technology is scary, god only knows what is going to break and what is going to let in the next Nimda. Lastly, there is that whole support problem of, "I uploaded my video to my blog and it's not working. It's IT's fault and they had better fix it!" Thank you, no.