Dealing With an IT Bully 521
jammag writes "'"You are an idiot." That was how I was greeted on an already gloomy, rainy Monday morning.' Eric Spiegel offer his a first-hand account of dealing with a tech world geek-gone-bad and presents some ideas for coping. 'These bullies are quick to aggressively divert blame for any problem back to someone else, because they couldn't possibly be responsible. Some are passive aggressive, where they will subtly lay blame behind your back. Others enjoy getting in your face and being as confrontational as possible.'" What experiences have others had that defied all logic and possibly made you want to start looking for rifles and bell towers?
Slashdot ID... (Score:4, Insightful)
Had you mentioned it, you would have made a friend forever (at the risk of becoming someone's best and only friend, though).
BTW: "You are an idiot." may sound like an insult, but from time to time it's just an accurate diagnosis
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to break it to you, but EVERY human is a drug user... see our brains are basically a chemical/electrical processing unit, everything you do is motivated and controlled by brain chemistry, even if you have never done a "drug" (even smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol or coffee) you still have these chemicals racing around, influencing your decisions and regulating your body.
When you are hungry it's because of a chemical that regulates energy, when you feel happy it is because of a chemical that induces these feelings, same with sex, exercise, basically everything, even fear.
To feel superior because you don't use an outside chemical to trick the brain into making yourself feel a different way is quite elitist, why is that any better than running on a treadmill for 30 minutes to get runner's high? Or wanting to have sex because it makes you feel good? Or eating ice cream?
All of these actions are ultimately motivated by the pleasure/high/"emotion" you have learned as a trained response to those actions. In fact without these pleasure inducing chemicals we would be in a constant state of pain all the time...
So we are all addicted to these chemicals.. we are all motivated by the need to placate the brain's desire for these chemicals.
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah...until you grow up. Then you're (hopefully)
starting to go the other way around. Rather than being motivated by your pleasures, you start causing your (mostly pleasure neutral) motivations to give you pleasure. Start getting a high from self-actualization - such as the pleasure of a job well done, for instance, or the pleasure of knowing and being where you belong.
So we are all addicted to these chemicals.. we are all motivated by the need to placate the brain's desire for these chemicals.
There are food addicts, sex addicts, and probably every other kind of bodily function addict. It is fair to say that being addicted to one thing is very similar to being addicted to something else, but it is NOT fair to say that everybody is addicted to something (even if you can't really quit). Just because any of these determine some of what we find pleasurable doesn't mean that it is this pleasure alone that drives all that we do (which is, by the way, how I would define addiction).
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that unless you're literally mentally ill, those natural chemicals aren't likely to ruin your life. Now I think people should be permitted to do whatever they like so long as it doesn't affect others - I'm not in favour of laws that try to prevent stupidity or self harm. However when's the last time you knew a drug addict that wouldn't steal, like, cheat or sell their body or their grandmother for the next hit? It doesn't just affect them. Of course stuffing them in prison where they learn how to commit new crimes is asinine, so basically I don't agree with either side when it comes to the "war on drugs". Wether it's the jailor or government trying to jail the addict or the pusher trying to sell them their next hit, it's all about control and manipulation of weak minded fools for profit.
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try telling that to a fat person with cancer and diabetes etc...
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:5, Funny)
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Go to any open terminal and try to log in as him 4 times. do this throughout the day randomly. you'll keep locking out his account and giving him utter hell trying to get anything done.
I'm the master Domain admin so I'll simply reduce privileges, accidently set the expire on the account to 15 minutes before lunch or a meeting, or I'll simply slightly unplug their cube's patch cable in the network closet on that floor. But if you dont have admin rights to the domain, simply trying to log in as them a few times will lock it nice and easy. also unplugging their keyboard slightly when you walk by their empty cube is a great thing to do as well.
the best thing I have EVER seen done was that someone packing taped a slice of bologna under his chair. in 3 days he stunk to high hell and could not find the source of the smell.
Dont get mad, get even. Nothing is sweeter than annoying them silently.
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Interesting approach. Me, he tries that, and he'll be sitting in front of several parties from HR explaining how it will Never. Happen. Again. This, after getting a little remark in his record, you know.
Rude insulting behavior at work?
Mmmmmm. No way, mon.
C//
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:5, Funny)
Hi Simon... (Score:4, Funny)
Good to see you're well.
Just thought I'd remind you that it's bad form to advise the lusers how to turn into a PFY or worse, a BOFH - we wouldn't want to have to break out the cattle prod again now, would we ?
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but in a work place environment its usually best to be more tactful. Even if you're CEO of the company yelling at the janitor, dressing someone down is generally bad for moral and in cases where you are the janitor calling the CEO the idiot, you'll loose your job.
If the IT person calls you an idiot, I'd bring it up with his supervisor as bad interpersonal skills.
If he had felt he was dealing with an idiot the best approach would be to say "The issue is too complex for a short explanation, do you have about an hour to spare or do you need to get back up and running ASAP?"
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... you'll loose your job. ...
OK, you're either British or a /. noob. This incorrect use of the word "loose" when it should be "lose" just drives me freakin' crazy. Can we all agree to just turn it into "luse" as the past-tense verb form of "to lose"? This new spelling would be totally 1337 (yes, I'm "old"!) for all the new little kiddies on the interweb tubes. Heck, we could probably even get it admitted as the new form of spelling to Webster's Dictionary.
Shamelessly OT: Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:4, Interesting)
Now we just need to persuade you guys to put the "u" in colour, and to pronounce the "h" in "herbs"...
Loose/Lose (Score:3)
That isn't an en_GB/en_US problem, FYI.
Just a bad spelling.
</Nazi>
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:5, Informative)
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Can't let the people down, now can we.
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:5, Funny)
Can't let the people down, now can we.
moron... obviously, you are just a shill for [republicans|democrats], completely dedicated to [closed source|open source] software to the exclusion of all facts, maniacally intolerant because of your blind devotion to [environmentalism|christianity], unable to see that your ridiculous faith in [capitalism|socialism] is the ruin of all humanity, therefor making you a [jack booted fascist nazi|klan member|islamofascist traitor].
Re:Slashdot ID... (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, only a poor manager with insecurity issues would say something like that. If you said that someone is an idiot, you haven't said why and you've focused on the fact that they are an idiot. You haven't dealt with the problem at all, and you've potentially caused a problem in the workplace.
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True story.
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You're certainly not going to win any friends by telling the dev team they are part of IT.
Strangely enough, around 1980 (?) the term 'IT' was introduced in my speciality (Computers in Education), before that we were 'Computer Literate' or 'Programmer' and IT became the defacto label for anyone working with computers, be it programmers, DTP or comms.
It's comparatively recently that a distinction is being made within the IT field that IT is for support and everybody else goes by different titles. Maybe there's a hierarchy there...
So it goes:
Support:-
1. Frontline support - "Have you tried to turn
Sensitivity (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sensitivity (Score:4, Funny)
You're right, but only if you're moving in geologic time. The referenced event was the University of Texas sniper [crimelibrary.com]
Confront him outright (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep eye contact but just say what everyone already knows but are too afraid.
Society really has taught us to be wimps in that aspect lately, everyone is frightened of any sort of confrontation. Pick your battles but honestly call him a duck, or more likely an idiot.
Re:Confront him outright (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's what the author ended up doing. Personalities like that are a serious hindrance. I've seen my share of people who divert blame or refuse to admit they're wrong, and usually it's because they receive more blame than they deserve, and usually someone else is in the wrong (and that person is in a position to never have to be wrong). A lot of people in IT are there because they're extremely talented and are right much more often than they're wrong. It creates a lot of potential for misunderstandings.
I think there's also a fundamental difference between a bully who's a normal coworker and a bully who's above you in the chain of command. There's a big difference between the stress of dealing with and unfriendly person of equal power and the stress of dealing with an unfriendly person who has a lot of power over your company, and management can forget that. I had a boss like that and it was sometimes hard to work with him because he didn't realize that insults weren't appropriate from someone in his position.
Re:Confront him outright (Score:4, Insightful)
And then you have the support guy who is passive aggressively telling his staff to badger the developer staff (in effect, throwing off his frustration with the CTO on them) and then failing to hash out the issue with his boss on Monday. It's his ass on the line! He needs to either stand up to his boss, he needs to go over his boss to his bosses boss and get him to assert some control over the CTO, or he needs to quit.
It's certainly doing his career prospects no good, and "It's not my fault" only goes so far for both of them.
Confront him in a context where there's proof (Score:5, Insightful)
1) If you must have a meeting with someone you know acts like that and talks like that, always bring witnesses. That way there will be someone to testify "oh my god, we made a simple request and he started swearing like a sailor!" to HR later, and he won't be able to tell lies about what you said. An audio recorder works too, but you can get in trouble if you don't make it clear that you have it and are using it, and if you do make it clear they usually won't meet with you and will try to make you look like the unreasonable one. Most people will ignore a coworker you brought along without explanation, and if they do ask for an explanation, you can just say "oh, I thought they might be involved later so I want them to hear the details."
2) Try to avoid phone calls with the person. If they call you, tell them you're busy and will get back to them right away, and then send them email. (If you have no better excuse, tell them you really have to go to the bathroom. Anything to get them off the phone.) If you have a phone call, even if it seems cordial, you never know what they might claim you said after the fact. If you must have a call with them, try to make it a conference call so you can have a witness, or invite someone into your office and put the call on speaker so the witness can hear it.
3) If you are having a phone call or meeting with them, if they become belligerent, swear at you, or use inappropriately insulting or hostile language, immediately tell them you will be pleased to communicate with them again in the future when they feel more able to control themselves, and then immediately depart or hang up without further comment. Take any witnesses with you.
4) After any unavoidable phone calls, immediately email them a summary of your understanding of the call. That way if they want to make claims about the call later, you can produce the email and say "I sent you call notes to prevent misunderstandings, and you didn't disagree with the notes, so if you failed to understand, that's not my problem."
5) Whenever possible, transact communications with the problem person by email. If they send you any emails in which they are hostile or directly and unequivocally insult you, immediately forward those emails to the person's boss and to HR with a request to know if this is the sort of language or remark that the company feels is appropriate business communication, and state clearly that it is difficult to do your job when reasonable requests are met with hostility and refusal to provide answers. If they actually physically threaten you in email, print it out and walk it directly to HR and insist that you want the police to be called.
6) Never delete any email except spam. You might need it later.
7) Never let any direct accusations about your competence that the person makes to your manager or to others pass unaddressed. Use courteous (no swearing) but blunt language to make clear that the accusation is completely false, provide copies of emails and other backup evidence as necessary, and be very clear that you are upset and insulted.
Unfortunately, people in the computer industry frequently have to deal with hostile users and occasionally hostile incompetent techs. (The competent ones rarely have anything to be hostile about.) I've had to deal with many. By remaining calm, restricting communications to email or channels where there are witnesses, and refusing to accept any BS, I've been able to get most of them terminated, and in the remaining cases I, like the author, felt it was best to move on because obviously the company was run by a pack of idiots.
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An interesting choice of words. It immediately set of my testosterone overdoze alarm.
I think he had it coming, really (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The support team that the author manages didn't get trained on the new version before it went into production.
2. They didn't know how to support it or even talk properly about the issues.
3. They didn't follow up properly in documenting the case.
4. They woke up the VP of software development at 3 AM without having good data for him.
As the manager of the support team, then, the VP-level person presumedly in charge of making sure his team is properly trained in both the company's product and the troubleshooting processes, the author didn't deserve to get yelled at... why again? I mean, sure, more diplomatic language is probably called for, but at the same time the implication I get from the article is that the author fucked up in a fairly serious way and now is mad that the VP in question wasn't polite enough about it.
Then there's the other stuff: Complaining about use of the word "fuck"? Trying to start a conversation about Battlestar? What the hell? You're supposed to be an upper-level guy at this company, for pity's sake! You really expect the CIO to waste his/her time getting you to play nice?
I guess where I'm going here is that I'm having a hard time seeing this as 'IT bullying'. Rather, my reaction is that the author doesn't have any place in management and should move back to a position that better suits his tendancies -- a job were units of work are handed to him and he does them versus a position that requires initiative or, God forbid, a little bit of toughness.
And they went live on a Friday evening. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd have preferred early Monday morning so EVERYONE would be awake and on-the-job if/when problems arose.
Re:I could see that on a Monday. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I think he had it coming, really (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe you missed the second page... I'll quote the first paragraph for you:
Granted, there was much pressure from top management to get this release out by Friday and thus documentation and any internal training were pushed aside. That being said, it turned out a major bug was in the new release and the on-call support engineer had run a baseline test, but couldnâ(TM)t put the results in context with the new reality introduced by this new bug. His only recourse was to escalate, and do it quickly.
So:
From the details given, I'd like to know what you expected Eric to do differently. Management pressed for the release, even though they knew the support staff wasn't ready. When an issue happened, the support staff tried to follow process to document the issue, couldn't, and followed a proper escalation process.
Re:I think he had it coming, really (Score:5, Informative)
If a new release is coming, it's his job to find a way to get his staff trained to support it and to make the others in management understand the necessity for staff training ahead of the release.
The release didn't just happen out of the blue. His staff didn't get trained because he didn't make it happen. The same goes for his staff being unable to follow the support procedures -- regardless of the reasons, it's ultimately his job to make sure his organization's procedures work.
Re:I think he had it coming, really (Score:4, Informative)
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Again, it's important not to think of this as a low-level guy. He's a direct-report of the CIO, or in other words he *is* upper management.
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I guess we'll just have to disagree on this point. I read it that the release was pushed from above Eric in their management structure. He may or may not have protested this, I don't know, that point isn't clear to me. I realize he was not a low level guy, but he wasn't the top guy either. As I see it, the release was forced before it was ready, Eric had to deal with the fallout, and did, by following the procedures that had been agreed upon.
We could go into quite a debate on if he could/should have he
Re:I think he had it coming, really (Score:4, Insightful)
My impression is that the procedure assumed a good faith by the support people to clear the problem, and that Eric, instead of digging in his heels on the deployment and lack of training or coming up with an alternative training plan, decided to play it as "OK, if you're not gonna let us train, then there's nothing we can do but take everything directly to you."
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I'm not sure where you work, but where I am, if my manager, or her manager, or anyone in my management chain decides to disagree with me, there's really not much I can do other than document the hell out of it, so I can whip it out when the shit hits the fan. Sometimes, things that affect you just simply don't get to be your call.
Currently, I'm doing level-3 support, and when the developers decide to go against my advice, I know that I'm going to pay for it later. But I can't stop the release, no matter
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If a new release is coming, it's his job to find a way to get his staff trained to support it and to make the others in management understand the necessity for staff training ahead of the release.
You can't manage by fiat - just because you declare something so doesn't make it remotely possible, let alone feasible. And I don't care what your pay grade is. If I come to the Software VP and tell him to develop an OS over the weekend, I can't just use the "you're a VP, make it happen" line. You're using the
Re:I think he had it coming, really (Score:4, Insightful)
The author was dealt a losing hand, and he had no choice but to play it when he was told to support software before the organization was ready. Upper management made the decision to push the software out, and the consequences should have been dealt with at the level the decision was made. In this case it seems like the author's boss (the CIO) or higher made that call, and he should not have been so glib about dismissing the problems that resulted. That's someone who isn't taking responsibility for his own decisions.
But it was completely wrong for Dirk, the VP of Software, to complain that he and his staff were called over the weekend. That is what the "engineer on call", as the article refers to him, is there for; he might be called in an emergency, even at inconvenient times. And Dirk must have been aware that the company was releasing new software, so it is part of his job to be ready for problems. By ignoring the call to him because he was annoyed, Dirk was putting the company at risk. That's not the right guy to have at the helm of an important department.
If Dirk wanted to get angry at someone he should have gotten angry at the CIO, who was responsible for the situation. It sounds to me like he was afraid to get angry at his boss, or knew it would be fruitless (given the CIO's later dismissal of the situation that would have been accurate), so he took out his anger on someone who he could beat up on without consequences, a peer. That is the mark of a real asshole.
The author and his support department may have been incompetent, or may not have been, but this situation doesn't spread any light on that. It does however show that both his boss and the VP of Software were irresponsible. This whole arrangement of people was dysfunctional.
Re:I think he had it coming, really (Score:5, Informative)
I could continue, but I've got to ask: were you reading the same article I was? It's possible that the information that was given was wrong and biased, but there wasn't anything in the article that the author did blatantly wrong.
Re:I think he had it coming, really (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, remember: We're talking VP-level here, a guy who reports directly to the CIO. At that level, your job is to get out there and accomplish your responsibilities, not to give excuses.
His actions do not sync with that level of responsibility. A guy at his level should have either found a way to get the basic training accomplished or gotten the release held up -- if the others in management don't understand the importance of getting support caught up, it's his job to make them understand.
This might sound unreasonable if you're used to thinking from a low- or mid-level management position, but at that level its basic to your job.
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Pull the training materials (and the knowledge inthem) out his exevuative ass?
or gotten the release held up
Not always possible. Not a 'politically' smart thing to do,even if possible.
if the others in management don't understand the importance of getting support caught up
They understood, they just pushed on anyway.
Well actually (Score:3, Insightful)
If a system dies over the weekend and it's a production system, you get the guys who know on the phone immediately. Basic troubleshooting steps in this case are problematic for two reasons: (1) in general, you want to get the system up as fast as possible, and (2) if the problem was easy to fix, i
Rifle and Bell Tower? (Score:2, Funny)
Dealing a with slashdot article grammar?
Ya gotta be careful (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially if you're the idiot.
Re:Ya gotta be careful (Score:5, Insightful)
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-Peter
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Man, I love monkeys.
-Peter
Re:Ya gotta be careful (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ya gotta be careful (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, the core of their job may be technical, but just about every job requires a little bit in the way of interpersonal skills. Somebody who goes around calling people idiots and acting bellicose does not meet minimum acceptable standards for human interaction.
My Cable Tech Support Call Yesterday (Score:5, Funny)
Broadstripe: Sure enough it looks like there are several places in Seattle experiencing some outages. Crews are out. Is there anything else I can help you with.
Me: Yes. My Cable is out and I'm pretty sure that it's mostly unrelated to those outages. It's been out for a month. It was out yesterday. It was out the week before that. A cable guy came out to turn on my neighbor's cable... and the same day when I got home from work my internet was down.
Broadstripe: If the cable is out across parts of Seattle how can you conclude that your problem is unrelated.
Me: Because I assume that most of Seattle hasn't been without cable for a MONTH.
Broadstripe: We can send someone out between 9am and 6pm on Monday.
(Yeah sure I'll just take a day off from work to wait for the cable guy. Thanks but no thanks.)
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My cable pings got above 300 regularly. So I switched to DSL. Just in case DSL ended up sucky I kept my Cable until I got the DSL all hooked up and happy. (If I cancel my Cable and need it back I know the backlogs are more than 3 weeks for installation).
DSL was installed and it immediately was plagued with outages (about 50% of the time it was down) but the pings when it was up were in the nice low 20s-40s. So what is a geek to do? Give up on his DSL low pings in exchange
Give him presents ... (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing the IT guy loves is little electronics.
Give him a fancy USB hub that you can buy for $10 or give him a laser keychain or LED toy or a microsoft branded frizbee or just some funny printed looking DVDRs.
You'd have to go to some bad-english Taiwan, Hong Kong websites to get this stuff cheap but it's useful to slip him one of these everytime he helps you out with a problem.
Re:Give him presents ... (Score:5, Funny)
I like to settle these things professionally... (Score:5, Funny)
Are you an idiot? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't feel the need to take the responsibility for being asked to diagnose a machine that won't boot up that smells UNMISTAKEABLY like cat urine... but was asked to.
I don't feel the need to explain why I deleted your iTunes directory off of my server that was taking up 30gigs of storage space... but was asked to.
I'll be the first to tell you that about 80% of the people that work IT these days have no business doing the job, but there's good reason that even some of the good ones are more than a bit on edge from time to time.
(What is it, bash IT day?)
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However, when dealing with people (in general) they normally are dealing with me because they're paid much more than me, dumb call or no. Who's really the idiot; the one making the call, or the one getting paid to take it?
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Well, if those were all downloads, you did delete ~ $7,500 worth of data - I'd be pretty keen to know why you did that to save (at today's prices) $6 of storage space.
Re:Are you an idiot? (Score:4, Funny)
The real question is why didn't I have "you" summarily terminated as well.
Re:Are you an idiot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Firstly, because any serious backend-server is going to be running SCSI or SAS disks, you can double that price straight away.
Now double it again - RAID 1+0 halves your storage capacity at a stroke.
Now multiply it by 5 - those 30GB were getting backed up, and if the backup procedure is any good there will be several full backups at any given point in time.
(OK, that's still a lot less than $7500. Hold on a moment...)
Now schedule downtime to increase storage capacity - and if your storage systems are already at capacity, include "upgrading the storage system to account for it". This will almost certainly require sign-off at a high level, so you'll have to speak to the IT director (or whoever is appropriate at your company).
Now explain to the IT Director that you're doing all this because someone decided that they'd like to store all their music from iTunes on a company system - despite there being a clear policy in place forbidding this. Let me know how you get on.
he should be so fired (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:he should be so fired (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to say that until they aren't around, at which point you have a company full of salespeople or whatever who can't get anything done because they have no clue how to use their own computers. While I agree that IT isn't the core focus of most businesses, it is absolutely integral to making any business function. Without IT most businesses would not exist, and knowledgable, adaptable IT staff can mean the difference between a two minute database or email server screwup, and having everything effectively shut down for five hours, so please, reconsider your statement.
And you probably would be a total idiot if you had to do their job.
See, I don't think so. Not that I personally would know how to do any arbitrary person's job offhand, of course. But I think the distinction is that most hapless users don't even try, and display little, if any, ability to adjust or extrapolate. Sit the average office yob in front of an application they've never seen before, and their first instinct will be to call for help and complain that they aren't "a computer guy" -- even though they've seen many applications that are very much like it. (Click the menus at the top, guys, just like every other program you've ever seen...)
While I might not be able to do Joe Punchclock's job, I'd at least be able to take a reasonably good stab at it -- if I'd done similar jobs before. That is what distinguishes normal people from the total idiots.
Also, your comment is a bit strange to me, since from my point of view, a user who constantly screws up their computer isn't doing his or her job in the first place. While the job might not be directly computer-related, computers are part of the workplace today and aren't going away. Not knowing how to use a computer competently is like not knowing how to use a copy machine -- and bear in mind, no one is asking the user to know how to fix either one, or how they work at a fundamental level. Just use them without breaking things or bothering other people because you can't figure it out.
All that said, yes, of course it's inappropriate to call someone an idiot to their face, even if they deserve it. But management could help here, too, by not hiring people who lack the basic skills to work in a modern office.
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There's no reason to insult people, or treat them badly in general. But the users, or more specifically management and HR, are also a major part of the problem. FAR too many employees at every level have very minimal computer skills. That would be fine, if a computer wasn't the PRIMARY (and possibly ONLY) tool needed to perform their job.
IT gets frustrated when they are constantly helping other employees to do tasks that the other employee was *hired to do*. Of course IT doesn't expec
Re:he should be so fired (Score:4, Interesting)
Computers are special. They are completely intuitive to me, and probably almost everyone here on slashdot, but not to other people. Maybe it's the levels of abstraction- I don't know- but people are more finicky about computers than they are about they way they drive or even their weight. It's a subject that can send reasonable people into foaming rage.
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IT is there to support the employees' use of the technology- tech that they NEED to do their jobs. Me, I'm a jet mechanic. My job is to fix jets, and that's about it. I use tools like drills, rivet guns, hammers, snips, and other stuff. Now imagine a special "Rivet Gun Dept" or RGD whose reason for existing would be to set up, maintain, inventory, and train people on the use of rivet guns. Now as I said before, rivet guns play an important role in my job; without my mad rivet gun skills, I'd be pretty useless as a mechanic. So let's pretend that I no longer need to know anything about rivet guns other than if I sort of... prop it up... like this... and click this button... BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM It will shoot a rivet. Hooray for me, I'm mechanic. Uh oh, my rivet gun came unplugged from the airline! What should I do? Call the RGD? Doesn't that seem ridiculous?
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IT are asked to be the RGD for a bunch of ostensible mechanics. People need to face the music: If you are a lawyer, your job requires a computer. If you are a secretary, your job requires a computer. If you work in data entry, your job requires a computer. And so on. Consider it a skill like driving that will pay big dividends in the long run.
To Users:
PEOPLE! These magic boxes are your freakin' livelihood and yet you take absolutely no effort to get to know them, to understand at least what the "Blue E" program is CALLED! You are mechanics, and computers are your rivet guns, and you need to learn how to use them RIGHT NOW. You need to learn the difference between making a shortcut and copying a file. You need to stop sending me links to emails in your Yahoo inbox. You need to stop looking at pr0n with your Big Blue E program. You need to learn HOW TO TURN YOUR CAPS LOCK OFF. BEING OLD IS NO EXCUSE; TYPEWRITERS HAD A SHIFT BUTTON, TOO.
Sorry about that. I used to work in tech support for a smallish, localish ISP. It taught me some of the most important lessons in my life, like why I will never, ever, EVER work in customer service again.
-b
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Geek-gone-bad? More like Geek-becomes-PHB (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been lucky enough to not have had these kinds of situations... but then again, I've also been on-call when my software upgrades have gone in AND had a good working relationship with the operations staff. When the few problems happened, they were able to call and get a quick and friendly resolution to the problem without all the name-calling. Almost like we had a system in place........
Depends on who you're dealing with (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got a few main categories:
1. Peers
2. Someone who works for you
3. Someone who works for one of your peers
4. Your boss
5. People your boss reports to
6. People who are senior to you but you don't actually work for (eg, Client Services Manager or some such)
In all cases though, there are a few guidelines. First, don't ever let the tone and content get condescending. Don't fight fire with fire, simply refuse to even discuss the issue unless they're willing to treat you with respect. This holds true for just about any of the relationships. Obviously you'll have cases where if you don't get a paycheck your kids don't eat, and then you take all kinds of shit if you have to, but that aside, don't let anyone abuse you, even if they own the company.
Second, be good at what you do. When people frequently need to come to you for help, they tend to be much more forgiving when things are your fault.
That's about all I got right now.
idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for playing, try again (Score:5, Informative)
Finally, if there's anything which needs to be addressed, let them throw their tantrum, and bring it up again later on.
Don't know about this case, but it works 90% of the time for me.
I wonder, though... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I took a look at one of Mr Spiegel's other articles (this one [earthweb.com]), which made me wonder whether he might have been reaping what he sowed. That article ends with the line "Now I wonder if Susan will come back to my team? Would you?" - and having read it, my answer would have to be "Not a chance in hell!". Admittedly, I'm biased - a night-owl myself, I'm habitually hours, rather than minutes, late for work - and yes, the expectations of a public-facing role are of necessity a little different. But someone who is unprepared to make small compromises to a rule they believe to be bad anyway in order to keep an exceptional team member is someone whose own priorities could use some work... and the fact that there were other parts of the company in which Susan's timekeeping wasn't an issue suggests that his insistence upon the rules was frankly pointless, soul-sucking pettifoggery.
(If you want to argue about that, go for it. I don't care, and I won't be responding - I simply don't understand people who put arbitrary rules above individual differences, I never will, and I don't even want to.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Having read the linked article, I think Mr. Spiegel may be one of the worst managers I've read about. I have quit 2 jobs for similar stickiness on rules. I am a developer, and a night owl, and granted customer support is a little different... But in his very article he contradicts himself. He says that core hours are 9-4:30, he then says if people come in at 7:30 they are allowed to leave at
Re:I wonder, though... (Score:4, Insightful)
Having said that, if Susan was as strong a team member as we are led to believe, then the better solution would be to perhaps offer a different support shift by which she could work the longer hours and pick up things for others. The key to keep in mind here, however, is that if you are going to advertise core hours for support for your customers, then you damn well better make sure that you have the people available. Support is different than development, that's something to keep in mind when you're reading this older article.
For myself, I've been in support, development and now I'm a manager. Personally I can see his point, but I honestly think his approach was too harsh and I definitely wouldn't want to go back to work for him if I were Susan. If Susan was a "night owl" as she said, then either work to split the support staff into different shifts (4 hours on the phone, 4 hours working tickets) or work to extend your support hours, staggering them as it may. Susan's excuse is weak for a support role at best, but his reaction was overblown as well.
Just call on Nick Burns - The IT guy (Score:3, Funny)
I'm a developer (Score:4, Insightful)
As a developer, it is my responsibility that the software works; and if the support team escalates to me it is my responsibility to take charge and resolve the problem for the customer. Afterwards, we and the support team can hold a post-mortem and go through the "if you see something like this next time, here's what you can do to resolve it for the customer; or failing that what you can do to prepare things for me when you escalate."
It is also my responsibility to see to it that the support team is trained:
(1) on what they can resolve in my product without escalation
(2) on how to prepare things for me when escalating
(3) on how to know the difference between a (1) and a (2) situation.
I, personally, would rather be called in unnecessarily in a (1) situation than to deal with the consequences of the support team failing to escalate when they should have (and thus making the situation worse).
I do NOT want the support team to be afraid of escalation. If they don't know what to do, that is a matter of ignorance; and as such is easily curable once identified.
Stupidity, on the other hand, is expecting the support team to guess at what to do because they've been too intimidated by having developers call them names. And that stupidity is on the part of the developers, not the support team.
In case it isn't obvious, I find Dirk's behavior, if accurately reported (we are only hearing one side), to be reprehensible.
Sounds familiar... (Score:4, Insightful)
My only solace; I heard 3 years later that he and the CIO were *escorted* from the building by Security. Probably they got caught taking kickbacks from vendors. That's what happened at their last place, where they were allowed to go quietly in the night rather than 'disgrace' a government agency.
The article got it right. Sometimes you gotta just go. He was up against a dev team manager that was an asshat, a CIO that tolerated that style, and nowhere to turn for sanity. I suspect the dev team was spectacularly unproductive there...
Asperger? High-Functioning Autism? (Score:5, Interesting)
About ten years ago on my second day at a particular job, I met the man who had just been recruited to serve on the same team--we were to be close colleagues. My only recollection of what I was doing is that I was sitting in the back room fooling around with servers--configuring them. After the briefest of introductions, he seated himself in a chair next to me, watched for a few minutes, and proceeded to roll his chair over my feet to get to the box I was working on.
It was the first of innumerable tooth-gnashingly annoying incidents. He had no concept of even the most rudimentary good manners (table manners and the like), no conversational skills at all, no concept of the "person-hood" of other people, whether they were fellow team members, superiors in the company, people of lesser position (such as cleaners, delivery people), or even women he hoped to date. It's as though the rest of the world was two-dimensional to him. In his more communicative moments, he wondered why people, and especially women, disliked him. The rest of the time he kept up a continuously running monologue, doing all within his power to prevent anyone else from voicing a thought or opinion. With all that, he was technically one of the most brilliant engineers I'd ever encountered.
It's good to be around people whose skills are better than yours--but only if you can learn something from them. That was impossible in his case. I was in the midst of a long and fairly prosperous career, and I concluded that he was a sociopath and worked my way into a transfer. I think at some level I thought he might open fire on us all some morning and turn our comfortable little server room into a bloodbath. The transfer improved my working life enormously. Another engineer, a much younger man, simply disappeared into another job and life.
I've come to realize that he was probably suffering from Asperger's [wikipedia.org] or some form of high-functioning autism. These conditions were not as well known then as they are now. For his sake, I hope someone encourages him to seek treatment or therapy. He's got a very lonely old age to look forward to.
But... But... Some users ARE idiots! (Score:5, Funny)
When we get tickets that say, "There are arrows in the porter" when the person (a manager, no less!) is trying to say "There are errors in portal" then yes, the user IS an idiot.
Rather than complaining that overworked and beleaguered helpdesk folks are rude, why don't you try not being a fucking moron for once?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When we get tickets that say, "There are arrows in the porter" when the person (a manager, no less!) is trying to say "There are errors in portal" then yes, the user IS an idiot.
Here's what you do for that. Mark the ticket "not reproducible" with a note saying: "Checked porter for arrows. No arrows found. Could not reproduce." and mark it as resolved. Spoken Broken English is one thing, but written broken English? Take it as a literal, just for fun.
Re-interpretation of the story (Score:5, Insightful)
When you see yourself heading into this kind of position, the very first thing you have to do is go into Cover Your Ass mode. If you see something going into distribution that your people aren't trained for, spell out the liabilities to your CIO. If the development team just plain doesn't have time to actually tell you how things are going to work, then mention it to the CIO, see previous statements. You can't tell me that this was completely unforseen.
Don't be pushy. You don't have to actually get the CIO to change things. Executives are notorious for failing to accept that their cost-cutting measures might have consequences. But when things go bad and everyone is running around trying to decide who to blame, calling attention to the CYA emails is the best way to say "Don't even think about trying to blame this on me if you don't want me to whip out a can of I told you so."
People make mistakes. In a highly aggressive environment, people try to blame their mistakes on others. This has nothing to do with IT bullying, it has more to do with geeks trying to play nice with sharks and insisting that they shouldn't have gotten bitten.
Linkedin (Score:3, Informative)
But... Funny thing about social networks these days. LinkedIn. I bet most people on slashdot are in his network. He's only 3 hops from me. So it's really easy to see all the places he has worked.
http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=1953893 [linkedin.com]
I've added them to my list of 'don't work for these companies'..
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My own personal bully story. (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago I was doing systems administration for a small group which provided ISP services for a business which happened to work in the same building as we did. They had their own IT crew and support guys, and were generally nice guys. We kept out of each others' way.
One day we got a phone call from a network administrator at another company. He said that someone using an IP address in our block was attempting to attack one of his systems, repeatedly and and unsuccessfully trying to open an FTP connection to one of their web servers. Working together, we were able to verify that the "attack" was coming from the nice guys downstairs.
That's where it got a little weird. The other admin demanded the identity of the person at the workstation who was doing the attacking. We blinked - was that the kind of information we could just give out? I didn't think that it was - or at least, that it should be, and that until we'd had the chance to make a good-faith effort to resolve the situation ourselves, we weren't going to go handing someone's name to someone else. So we declined. The conversation got a bit tense, and I asked him to hold on while I contacted my manager.
His response was even-handed: requests to divulge the personal information of clients would be handled by our legal department. I was the one who got to deliver the message, and so when the other admin bloviated that they were following a policy and would hate to involve their lawyers, I took some relish in replying that we were following a policy too, and offering to forward him our legal department's contact information.
In the end, it turned out that the "attacker" was actually a consultant being paid by the company he was "attacking." They'd given him bad login information, and his software was being a bit too aggressive in retrying connections. So, much ado about nothing.
Does this apply to bullies on USENET? (Score:3, Funny)
what about the IT client bully? (Score:4, Interesting)
My Own Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I had an experience in one of my jobs, and it was with a co-worker/subordinate:
So here it was, me as the head of the IT department for a Navy command, and the only military officer in the shop; everyone else was a civilian contractor.
After a couple of years, I was feeling very comfortable: Things were getting done, 90% of the users were happy, and I could answer most questions and problems within 30 minutes of the subject coming up, if not right away.
Then things started going down hill. People were getting frustrated, required maintenance wasn't being done, and the head contractor had screwed up and corrupted the entire mail system (had to spend a whole weekend getting it back.)
As time went on, things got worse, and I could never figure out how or why. I started getting acid reflux, couldn't sleep, and was wondering why it all seemed to go to hell.
It all came to a head when, after a particularly thorough chewing out by an unhappy user, one of the techs came and told me that the managing contractor (she of the corrupt email) had been going around behind my back telling everyone how screwed up I was and how everything was going to hell because I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground.
(To be fair, she was under a lot of pressure; the company she was working for was planning on firing/"downsizing" to save money, and our 5 person shop was seen as a potential target. Unfortunately, she decided to push her own importance by cutting down me. Definitely passive-aggressive.)
Anyways, after checking out the sordid tale (just to make sure what I was being told was true), I went home, had a beer, talked to my wife, and then called my boss: Since you can fire the contractor, fire me. I explained that this conflict was hurting the command, and
Either way, I wasn't going to take this crap any more. (And yes, I did try to talk to the higher-ups about this, but all they could do was shrug and say "Sorry, we can't get rid of her.")
Boy, within 30 seconds of getting to work the next morning, everyone had heard about it! At least to me, most people were supportive, and said, "About time!" By mid-morning, the manager in question asked to talk to me privately, and started crying about humiliating this was. She also mentioned that she could get fired if this got back to corporate. All I said was that I couldn't help it; we couldn't seem to work together, and gave my reasons above.
Well, to make a long story short (I know...too late), the Wing commander called me in, chewed me out for not working out this problem myself (and probably rightfully so...), and then said to get my a$$ back to the job because no one else can do it. I said, "Aye-aye, sir!" and went back to work.
Things got better in the shop for a good while; I volunteered for a 6-month duty during the war, and when I got back, it didn't matter because I was getting out very soon.
Moral of the story: I don't know--you tell me if it makes any sense.
For every bully, there's at least 10 just plain (Score:4, Insightful)
The bullying thing is a small problem compared to the idiocy. I left my last job 10 years ago to run my own company(ies) after I realized my boss, the owner of the company, was not going to let the company succeed if it meant doing things better than he could do them himself. Classic case of founder throttling the business. If there's going to be an idiot in charge, it might as well be me.
Before that I worked for a company where the most senior VP would scream obscenities at managers in meetings if things weren't working out the way he wanted them. He wouldn't scream at anyone approximately his size or larger who would look him squarely in the eye and adopt a physical posture that telegraphed a readiness to punch him in the gut if he tried that crap.
My personal experience (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't go into too many details because we're a public company. But my position at the time was on a customer-facing team. I did a mix of IT stuff and programming, and I'm a pretty knowledgeable person. I'm not an IT guy (programmer by trade), but I am a geek, and I can hold my own. Anyway, my team was in charge of some services that we hosted for our customers. The deal at that time was that while we ran the servers and software, our internal IT group managed the internet connectivity and our firewall. Of course, the IT group managed the internal corporate servers, network, active directory, etc.
We previously had a manager that was a control freak, and would not let the IT group near our hardware, nor give them access to our systems - even though our systems were in their datacenter - this was the true source of the friction. The way it really should have been was that the IT group should have managed not only the customer hosting network and firewall, the hardware and OS on the servers too. We should simply have been administering the software that runs on those systems. The IT group is the most qualified group to handle the hardware and OS, and it would have made less non-billable work for my team. We all agreed on this, but because of time constraints, we were unable to change things and set them up the "right" way.
I was the senior engineer in the group, and was generally the person handling our internal hosted services. The senior engineer in the IT group was constantly giving me crap about the way things were set up, and basically treated me like I was an idiot (and even called me an idiot once or twice). Where my case differs from the original poster, however, is that his boss is actually a really reasonable guy, and helped us resolve our differences.
How did I fix the problem? I sent the following e-mail and CC:'d his boss and mine. From then on, we had a very smooth working relationship. Sure, he was probably still talking crap behind my back, but I'm not there to make friends - I have a job that I need to get done, and from then on, interfacing with the IT group became a lot easier for me. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when he quoted me a particular non-security-related, unwritten IT policy that we were planning on implementing in the future to make everyones' lives easier, but again due to time constraints, we simply hadn't gotten to it yet.
Here's the e-mail. Pay close attention to the last paragraph before "No hard feelings" - it sums up my opinion about this type of thing perfectly.
---
The next time you decide to quote policies and procedures to me, please don't forget that I regularly go out of my way to make sure I do things the way that you prefer, and I try to follow all of your standards by example.
Datacomm and MIS have always had to work closely because of the current division of responsibilities when it comes to our internal information systems. I look back on the 2+ years that I have spent working in this department, and see that I have always been treated like a second-class citizen. I understand that you are an expert in your field, and you have the certifications to prove it, and I respect that. I'm sure it took a lot of work. That does not mean that others are not as smart as you, or not as good as you, yet you seem to have no compunction treating people in this way.
Our groups both have similar purposes: To implement information systems, and then maintain and support them so that they run smoothly for the users. While you do a fantastic job of this implementation and maintenance, your customer service skills are, quite frankly, horrifying. You are con
How I've dealt with this sort of person (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Flat out refuse to play. "Dirk, you're being an ass. I'm leaving, I'll be back in an hour - but if you're an ass again, I leave again. We can forget this ever happened, but I'm not going to sit through endless replays of it either."
1) Make those conversations happen around other people. Be sure the bully exposes his bully-ness to as many people as possible (or is forced to rethink the bully tactic).
3) Have ALL your ducks in a row, and documented. The bully will almost certainly lie, and every time you make his lies apparent, he deflates a bit more. Works especially well in conjunction with #2. Bonus when you catch that lie he made in a CC'd-to-everybody email, which of course bullies love to originate.
4) Let the bully volunteer to take point on the next deathmarch project - ideally, something you are sure he'll fail monstrously at. It won't be hard to quietly goad him into thinking it was his own idea.
Dealing with an IT bully (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't had anything work for an IT Bully.
I tried being nice, I tried telling them that what they were doing is wrong, I tried reporting them to management, I tried giving them things like food, I helped them out with their projects, I was a team player, but I still got bullied.
Ultimately I was the one that got fired because I got really sick from the stress of all the bullying. When my health insurance bills got too high, management got rid of me.
Not much I can do about it. I am better off being self employed. Nobody to bully me then.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I was treated like a dog-first IT job(literally (Score:3, Interesting)
Since the dot-com bust, $15/hr is probably what you were worth as an IT guy with only "a few classes" worth of experience. There are a lot of geeks who have been working with computers since they were kids; If you're not one of them, it takes several years before you can really compete with them.
I also think the method you described would be perfectly appropriate for training a dog (you'd want to avoid the eyes, though).
That said, I know several people who work for close to minimum wage, and they would