IT rants!

[Ratt]

Luckily, we don't put up with clients hiring an IT firm and then trying to manage IT. There are a lot of potential clients out there, but you have to choose which ones believe in your product / service.

I've had a few very interesting conversations where we have literally started the process of cancelling the contract before the client backed down and stepped out of the picture. Lets work out a budget, we'll manage it and report back the results. Keep Out.

My favorite so far has been to the CEO who decided to redesign a 3.5m network proposal on the fly - "You came to us....remember? If you want to argue or question every data point then we can just close up now and part ways before we waste anymore of each others time." He got flustered, stormed out and dismissed the meeting. We were halfway across the parking lot when we got the signed proposal in our email.

This is the company's problem where I work. The client will hire us as IT consultants, and then the company will say something like, "Oh, well we want to do it this way, so do it this way." And instead of my company saying, "No, you hired us for the sole purpose of advising you on/building you an IT infrastructure, this is the best way to do it," they pussy foot around and act like they have to take the clients' advice when the reason they hired us in the first place is because they have no fucking clue how to run things on the IT side.

[ceyko]

Ditto. Hospitals were absolutely astounding on how backwards their IT teams can be.

As a consultant, I'm floored at how for one group you have some folks with no experience, then at another there are high end people working it that are dedicated. From one hospital/group it varies so much sometimes.

[Ratt]

Ditto. Hospitals were absolutely astounding on how backwards their IT teams can be. I dont know if its just Hospitals, but jesus their IT team can act like junkyard dogs protecting their scrapheap when you want to do anything.


What I find amusing is when an IT Director thinks he is a bit too big for his britches as King of all things, tries to blackmail the company he works for, and gets the legal banhammer dropped on his ass.

Both IT teams i work with here are pretty solid. Good folks with a lot on their plate so we know to be patient with them.

Where do you work?

[32vfromhell]

I install medical equipment for a living and travel all over the US. I get tired of dealing with completely incompetent hospital IT people who act like patching a network drop and assigning a static IP will take weeks to accomplish. God forbid I ask about VPN tunnel access to our remote servers.

Ditto. Hospitals were absolutely astounding on how backwards their IT teams can be. I dont know if its just Hospitals, but jesus their IT team can act like junkyard dogs protecting their scrapheap when you want to do anything.


What I find amusing is when an IT Director thinks he is a bit too big for his britches as King of all things, tries to blackmail the company he works for, and gets the legal banhammer dropped on his ass.

Both IT teams i work with here are pretty solid. Good folks with a lot on their plate so we know to be patient with them.

[Ratt]

I dunno...maybe 'cause the phones are down!?!?

As stupid as it is, that's our IT mandate, to email a ticket in when something doesn't work, or they don't do anything. It's a hoot when the server tanks because of whatever and we have to get mgmt to push IT to get us up and running again without a ticket.

I like how our IT group pushes major updates on a workday afternoon, effectively shutting the company down for that 1-2 hours. Really? That's your plan?? How about over the weekend when know one is here!!?!

Don't get me started on hardware. No, a run-of-the-mill Dell IS NOT good for a CAD station! Especially after your 100+ "security" bloatwares chewing up all of the performance!

Sounds like you have a shitty IT team. No good IT person wants to push out updates when people are touching their computers, because, invariably, IT is going to have to touch every workstation that had problems, which is likely to be many.

[hunt4m3x]

I dunno...maybe 'cause the phones are down!?!?

As stupid as it is, that's our IT mandate, to email a ticket in when something doesn't work, or they don't do anything. It's a hoot when the server tanks because of whatever and we have to get mgmt to push IT to get us up and running again without a ticket.

I like how our IT group pushes major updates on a workday afternoon, effectively shutting the company down for that 1-2 hours. Really? That's your plan?? How about over the weekend when know one is here!!?!

Don't get me started on hardware. No, a run-of-the-mill Dell IS NOT good for a CAD station! Especially after your 100+ "security" bloatwares chewing up all of the performance!

Everyone has cell phones.

[GhostTX]

but when serious shit happens, ie phones don't work or email server is down, no calls.

I dunno...maybe 'cause the phones are down!?!?

As stupid as it is, that's our IT mandate, to email a ticket in when something doesn't work, or they don't do anything. It's a hoot when the server tanks because of whatever and we have to get mgmt to push IT to get us up and running again without a ticket.

I like how our IT group pushes major updates on a workday afternoon, effectively shutting the company down for that 1-2 hours. Really? That's your plan?? How about over the weekend when know one is here!!?!

Don't get me started on hardware. No, a run-of-the-mill Dell IS NOT good for a CAD station! Especially after your 100+ "security" bloatwares chewing up all of the performance!

[red95gts]

I install medical equipment for a living and travel all over the US. I get tired of dealing with completely incompetent hospital IT people who act like patching a network drop and assigning a static IP will take weeks to accomplish. God forbid I ask about VPN tunnel access to our remote servers.

[LS1Goat]

Wouldn't even know where to start.

[2165 Turbo Rail]

Perfect day for this question.... If we needed help right now we would be screwed because the IT group is having a team building experience at Main Event!

I asked their director how I could get that kind of crap for my dept. Then I found out about 30 mins later that all of HR is gone... so I ask around... they are at the Rangers game right now... another team building event.

Opposite side of the question I know

[Binky]

Luckily, we don't put up with clients hiring an IT firm and then trying to manage IT. There are a lot of potential clients out there, but you have to choose which ones believe in your product / service.

I've had a few very interesting conversations where we have literally started the process of cancelling the contract before the client backed down and stepped out of the picture. Lets work out a budget, we'll manage it and report back the results. Keep Out.

My favorite so far has been to the CEO who decided to redesign a 3.5m network proposal on the fly - "You came to us....remember? If you want to argue or question every data point then we can just close up now and part ways before we waste anymore of each others time." He got flustered, stormed out and dismissed the meeting. We were halfway across the parking lot when we got the signed proposal in our email.

[Dave586]

have to monitor two email accounts
Customer ask to test something out and they have no clue how long it takes to set up the test..and they keep extending the scope.
Customer has limitied understanding of technology, but think they know everything. They miss meetings with Vendors and SME's that took weeks to line up.
Customer thinks CAT3 will work just fine for network connectivity and voip.

[Silverback]

Unless you are in my contacts, I don't answr my cell phone. You can either leave a message or send a text, but either way if i don't have you in my contacts you aren't important enough to be able to interrupt my day.

exactly, and i rarely check voicemail, even with google voice, unless the message translates and i can tell who it is, and it seems like someone i know, i might go play the message.

Those that need me know to text/email as i'll always check those regularly.

[ceyko]

I hate all these conference calls.

How the fuck am I suppose to get 8+ hours of work in the day while I have 5 hours of conference calls a day?

Plus, generally speaking for every .5 hours of a conference call it generates 1-2 hours of follow-up work at a minimum. That's standard follow-up/confirmation type work for a conference call. Not including any project decisions that require coordination and completion.

If you have 5 hours of conference calls, you probably have to work a 14 hour day to deal with normal work, conference call work and misc work that just comes up that is impossible to document. (answering misc questions, being part of the team and so on)

[ceyko]

Dude that's what they're doing! Copy/Pasting from a script, but when its a new guy doing it they go over every single command in detail. For the most part anytime we deploy something its followed by a webex meeting for infrastructure/redundancy testing.

I'd hang myself then.