Princess Fix IT

I actually had no idea until the last IT newsletter that all emails triggered the pager. It would be nice if you guys had a non-critical email so when we discover, say, a printer is really low on toner, we can pass the word and move on. If I'm at work late I've usually got so much stuff in my head that I'll forget to say anything unless I do it right then.

I did mean to reply to the newsletter with that suggestion, but then it got lost in the thick of dealing with whatever crises were ongoing.

As for the password thing, most people do it rarely enough that they forget in the interim. If you only had to use CodeWarrior once every six months you'd forget a lot of it too.

That was me, btw - I'm so used to LJ I forget I have to put my name in. Maybe MT needs a 'prompt anonymous' to prevent such accidents :-)

Good point with the 'Non-Critical' email account, but do you seriously think people would use it? Most people think all their requests are high priority and that's fine, because to them, they are. We've discussed that but it was another idea thrown to the side. Being on call is just part of the gig. Fortunately I can complain about it here :)

The password bit...every 90 days? I would think that would be often enough to drill it in that fool's head, right?

I'm sure MT has something like that, but I have no idea where that feature is...here feature feature...

Ah. So that's what life looks from the IT side of things. I know you don't want to hear it, but here's the view from the other side of the fence. (That's not directed towards you, Princess, but towards the general state of things. I try to be considerate only because the IT grunts suffer. If I could hand the pain straight on to the right guys, I'd be paging all night...)

E-Mail that gets routed straight to a pager? Somewhere between moronic and incompetent. Either give us the pager number, or only route high-importance messages. E-Mail by its nature is a medium that does NOT imply immediate urgency. It's relayed, at least in normal companies. It's not exactly my fault that we have stupid rules about request priorities...

Debug kits need IT approval to get moved? You must be sh*tting me. I can move a piece of hardware all on my own, thank you very much. If you need to keep track, I'm happy to keep you updated. So why do we need to get your approval? Keep in mind: if you annoy me too much with mindless rules, I might one day decide to play exactly by said rules. And that means e-mailing forms at 3am.

Changing passwords is a freaking nightmare for some of us. I had to change it a couple of times this morning, with some help from IT, before it took...

And never mind the fact that the new passwords are not a iota more secure, but harder to remember. And if we propose a truly secure solution (Biometrics+Security Token), even at our own expense, it just gets ignored by the powers that be.

I would not be surprised if some of those late night calls are just made to make IT pay for the pain they inflict on us. (Again, not the fine folks who actually do the work. But sometimes, in the heat, people stop differentiating)

All said, I'm still with you - 3am is rude. I don't think I've ever sent off-hours e-mail after I found out that it goes directly to the pager. (A fact which IT, like so many other facts, forgot to share. But I'm glad you keep us posted about the status of not-yet-installed hardware.)

Yeah, why not have the pager number available? Face it, most people are lazy, and e-mail is easier than a phone call - so people would probably only call if it really was an emergency.

And I agree, I think the password policy only provides the illusion of better security. I've got better things to do than change my password every five minutes.

And after spending a whole night dreaming about IT problems (Yep. It's proven now - I seem to have *no* life whatsoever...), I finally know what is so deeply upsetting to me.

Every single one of the magic rules from IT is, at its core, about one thing: A complete lack of trust. No trust that non-IT people will keep IT in the loop where equipment goes, no trust that IT members will properly prioritize requests, no trust that the pager number will not be abused. (Although the latter one is puzzling - it cannot get any worse than it is now, can it?)

That, and an abject fear of anything unusual. You want to use security tokens? Sorry, we cannot possibly see the value in the fact that you, on your own dime, explore a more secure network solution for us.

You want to do some work at home, on a Macintosh laptop? and then connect it to the network? Sorry, we cannot possibly see the value in you using a virus-free environment connected to our network. (There's not a *single* OSX virus so far)

You're still free to bring in highly infection-prone PC laptops, though.

And again, it's not about all the people doing the hard work - it's about the one person working hard to create his personal fiefdom so he might one day be called a CIO.

This whole issue of trust is a universal thing. The problem is, someone, at some point, hired a dumbass. That dumbass fucked things up over and over again and pissed a lot of people off, ruining it for everyone. Thus, The Rules are made. I've seen it at every single job I've had, so I assume it's not too far from the truth there.

That and the personal fiefdom thing. See a lot of that, too.

Being the radical that I am, I'd say the *original* dumbass is the one who decided not to fire the person who fucked things over repeatedly.

The secondary problem here is that the rulemaker actually *is*... - never mind.

And I've seen it not at every company. One of my ex-bosses run a small one-person shop when I joined him. He fired non-performers, and was up to 15 people when I left him. (Of my own volition!)

He's now running a successful consulting company who had quite a few more than 15 people last time I checked. There was always implicit trust, till you screwed up significantly. Then you, and only you, got put on probation. More screw-ups of the severe kind, and the game was over. Was a *great* company to work at.

I don't ask for much, but trust is important to me.

"I've seen it at every single job I've had..."

Pay no mind to Crowdpleazr. Like the rest of us, he's still sore that Pop-Tarts got banned at JVI. :op

Actually, you're right, there wasn't too much of that at JVI at all. Most mistakes were pretty much just swept under the rug. Thank god, for screwups like me! :)

And actually, I was salty about coke being banned, until they brought it in to appease those of us left after the Great Purging.

They supplied cocaine after the big layoffs? I suppose Hooker Fridays replaced Freddy Fridays as well. Bastards!

"I suppose Hooker Fridays replaced Freddy Fridays as well"

yeah, but it was mostly just Simeon pimping out whoever he picked up on the street...

Goodness, I didn't expect this much of a response. Minus the hooker and cocaine comments of course :)

Today was rather eventful regarding this particular subject, but I'm too tired to write about it, so I will follow up with an entry tomorrow.

My $0.13 about this whole thing... when you create policies that make things that should be easy to deal with, hard to deal with, people will learn how to bypass them. This can actually make the organization doing the rule-making much more inefficient as things move into a severe area of grey.
Let's move this out of the abstract. An obvious area here is taxation and the collecting of tariffs. When taxation becomes too complex or overbearing, people turn towards black and grey markets, and misreport things, smuggle.
Making people change passwords every 60 or even 90 days is basically stupid. My work flow finds me working best not logging out of my computer so that I can continue exactly where I left off when I return to work in the morning. If I don't log off or power off regularly (which I don't), I don't enter my password frequently. In fact, I probably wouldn't even know my current password if it weren't for wanting to use Webmail.
So, if I only log in at work once every 60-90 days, and every time I actually log in I'm effectively required to change my password, how do I resolve this problem? Simple! I start writing my password on my goddamned white board, out in the open where its easily recovered. Sort of defeats the whole purpose of security, but, there you go. Dumb policy leads to equally dumb behaviour.
Over the years I've dealt with some pretty complicated password testing systems where you were required to pick passwords that would succeed forward and backward dictionary checks, test against 'leet speQ, etc. Having reasonable minimum lengths to the passwords, timeouts on network password challenges, and having them survive a reasonable dictionary test should guarantee as much security as one can reasonably expect. Requiring me to change my password constantly will only end up with me picking the easiest possible thing for me to remember rather than something hard for people to guess, which makes things less secure.
Oh, and regarding the idiotic pager thing... you guys could make it so that only emails with the "urgent" flag set actually trigger the pager, cause well, urgent emails are probably urgent emails. Cause if I have an email to send to IT, I'm gonna send it, and not wait 12 hours until its convenient.
Think about how rediculous that is for a second. If I have to wait until people are actually at work, they why do I have to send an email in the first place? Why can't I simply go up to the stable door, ring the doorbell and (HAHA) dictate! my request to the waiting IT person? Why do I need to send emails at all if people have to actually be around to receive them? Email is a slow conduit that doesn't guarantee *any* response (emphasized by generic acknowledgement messages stating your problem is being dealt with a microsecond after I hit the Send button). In fact that this is even an issue to begin with demonstrates much greater overall problems with the current direction of the IT dept at The House of Fun.

Alrighty, where to begin...

First things first...Black Goat, I really dig the beagle pups so let them live! :)

Secondly, when did this become the password forum? Have mercy gentlemen! It's not my policy! I think ya'll have me confused with someone who actually has an iota of power over policy...or anything else for that matter.

The after hours mess seems to have been magnified as of late and there have been a few casualties along the way. That wasn?t exactly how I planned it. Then again, is it ever? I thought it would be a good idea to survey the user community and ask them what policy would work best for them and hopefully for us in IT as well. Ya know, get them involved in the policy making process, as it does effect them the most. I passed this idea along to Management and after much back and forth, they agreed. Logical I think.

That evening, a page came through at 1AM for a low priority request so I woke up, fired up the trusty laptop and responded as usual. The following morning an email from the user awaited me with a light hearted joke. I wasn?t amused because I was still bitter about being woken up, but I did understand it was a joke. I passed it along to my co-workers, called the guy a tool and went about my day. Apparently this user was given a stern talking to by Management. I?m not clear if it was because of the joke (no, it wasn?t offensive in nature) or because of the timing of the email. I think Management?s intention was good, but it wasn?t the route I would have chosen. I did however, make a request to Management earlier that day that the user community, in its entirety, be reminded about the after hours pager duty. I?m not exactly sure how that translates to busting one guy?s balls for doing what comes natural, but hey, I?m no member of the Red Cape Brigade, so who knows. All this turned into a really sweet email by the user to me to apologize. Well, that?s just fucked up! I felt really bad for him. He was asking for help from the people whose sole purpose is to help him and he?s apologizing to me? Poor guy. Yes, I wasn?t pleased with being woken up, but that isn?t the point. That should not have happened. I called him immediately and told him how sorry I was he got yanked into an IT Drama. My main goal for the survey was at minimum, get Management to say hey, you don?t have to respond to every email that comes through. Funny thing is, after several days of discussing this to no end, Management has yet to give me an answer about that particular point. Why do I bother?

Let's see how long we can keep this alive ;)

Ah - where to begin. Let's start with the easy question. Why complain here? Because you're the only IT-person that is vocal and accessible. This, by default, makes you your departments spokesperson. Like it or not, that's the way things are.

I'm neither going to share my complaints with someone who is not outspoken (how would I ever get feedback?), nor with the head of the department, who is categorically closed to most suggestions from the outside. At least in my experience. So, if I want a meaningful dialogue (after all, there /might/ sometimes be a reason to what IT does, and I /just/ might miss it.... Highly unlikely, but still ;) ), I go talk here. Or to you personally.

I know I get set straight if I'm wrong, and I also know that quite a few people in this company read your articles. I'm still thinking maybe people just don't know that some things are not working out.

That being settled, let's move on to the policy survey. If that by any chance was part of the quarterly IT survey, I'd bet most of the company has ignored it. If you want our opinion, ask us. Most of the people here don't appreciate "corporate america"-style paperwork - we'd rather engage in something meaningful. So how about sending an e-mail (without the garish IT HTML nonsense, please!) to everybody and asking them directly? In case you're worried about the flood of replies, create a seperate mail address just for that purpose, so you can easily sort through.

And just in case the objection "too much work!" comes up: Did you, or did you not want to hear our opinions? And at least my opinions usually can't expressed by checking yes or no on a form....

One of our problems is that communication with IT is usually formalized, bland, and soulless. Which segues nicely into part 3, the "stern talking to" by management.

If we weren't slavish adherents to forms and policies, management might have decided to first talk to you, to find out what bothered you about that e-mail. They might have even suggested you settle this directly with the guy. (Then again, maybe they were afraid for him... :)

Instead, we "take note of a problem" and "ensure the proper steps are taken". Without even knowing if there *is* a real problem. After all, if management gave a stern talk to everybody who has been accused in e-mail of being a tool, they'd have a lot of talking to do. Especially in this company.

What we need is *open* communication. What we try to achieve by posting here is getting you to forward our needs to management. Or maybe even getting them read by them - you never know... (Hi, Matt!)

Ok, well from reading this, a couple of thoughts come to me. Bear in mind, I'm an outsider and as such may not know too much but...

1) How did your email calling the guy a tool translate into a management talking to? Management should never knee jerk react to an email like that. If they do, you might want to keep them off your "I'm bitching" email list. I'm sure I would have done the same thing in your shoes, but now knowing the outcome, it can save some drama in the future.

2) Polling an entire group of users never comes up with a satisfactory solution. The masses as a whole come off as a large mess when it comes to what they really want. I'd think it would be better to have a small group of trusted and smart people from each area in the company and ask them to discuss IT policies and how it affects them and their group. The signal to noise ratio is much greater, and more than likely you'll end up with solutions that fit 99% of your user base AND don't make you crazy. The downside is that those who are chosen actually have extra responsibility, but if they want a better workplace they have to work for it, instead of just expecting others to do it for them (ie Management, which it sounds like doesn't really have the best interests of the users at heart).

Anyway, that's just my thoughts. Take 'em or leave 'em.

No, no, no, no, no, groby! I wasn't bitching about ya'll coming around to complain. I'm more than happy to give you a space for that here. What I was trying to say is that I was surprised by the massive response to the post. Oh and that whole Hi Matt bit?not funny. :)

The 'tool' email wasn't sent to Management by me. It made it's way there via forward by a Senior Official. I'm not concerned about calling him a tool, it's not the first time I have done that to a user, nor am I concerned it got forwarded. Don't write anything you can't back up, right? I'm not sure why they went after him and I'm not going to ask. I wasn't even included on the emails to begin with, so who knows.

I suggest free donuts.

Vince, I practice free donuts. Religiously. Hasn't fixed IT yet.

Princess: You *should* be interested why your e-mails are forwarded to management without ever checking what the problem is. The problem IT has is its "Daddy knows what's good for you"-attitude. And that whole e-mail thing is yet another person deciding they just know what you were saying and what happened.

It might be a good thing to nicely ask that senior official to come back and check the facts next time, since the scolding was not the intended consequence. On the other hand, depending on the official, that might be hard....

"It might be a good thing to nicely ask that senior official to come back and check the facts next time..."

Yeah, right. I'll get right on that. Because we all know what happens when I speak my mind.

I prefer to stay employeed, thank you very much :)

True, donuts won't fix IT.

But they are tasty.

Not to revive this dead, dead string, but...

Here's a little story about how IT can't win, and even though I know IT can't win, I'm going to bitch about it anyway.

I've been asking them to upgrade the tools perforce server for months! Months!

And nothing has happened!

Frankly, the excuses that they are busy doing other stuff are beginning to wear thin. If they are that busy, then they need more networking people. This isn't something I happened to mention, there's a ticket and everything, and there are Real Benefits to doing this upgrade (namely: 1) performance enhancements and 2) better file integration tracking, so if you move stuff around (like I do), it doesn't "forget" that stuff was integrated).

So as a User, I just sit here and think "what the fuck are they doing, sitting around and scratching their asses?" because not only is my request, months later, still not done, but I don't even get any status updates as to why or when it WILL be done (unless I pester C to pester them. I shouldn't have to pester people just to find out when a ticket entered months ago will be taken care of.)

Where's my donut, dammit!

"Where's my donut, dammit!"

The same place my long promised lolli is, I suspect, Mr. Bitchy McBitch-A-Lot! :)

Oh and not to make your issue more frustrating or anything, but I have no idea what you're talking about.

hehe

We expected nothing less from IT - "We have no clue what you're talking about". Could be a tagline.... (Not you. Just in general)

Seriously - the whole "trouble ticket" thing is so seriously flawed, it's not funny. Why can't I see the status? Why can't I follow up on it in,oh,like, a web-client?

I mean first we're admonished to keep mailbox size small (stupid, given the price of storage, and the cost of people now having to reorganize data they might need), then we have to keep all old IT e-mails around to remember the trouble ticket numbers. What's up with that?

As for the bitchiness - that's the only way you get *anything* major done in this place. Of course, instead we can all choose to sit around and coast towards doom - certainly easier than doing something about it. (Again, not about you, Princess. More about general attitude)