I hate corporate IT people

[edesignuk]

Yes but why can't they just say that? Rather than some stupid excuse. Although i don't understand why i shouldn't be able to view my work emails on my phone when i can check them at home on my laptop over the net.

Especially since all they have to do is set up the account. Unlike an iPhone, they already supported the blackberry.

It's corporate data (email), corporate data should only be on corporate equipment that has been purchased for you if it has been deemed a necessary requirement for your job role.

Obviously I don't know how you access your corporate e-mail from home, but I would assume and expect (or at least hope!) it's through some sort of secure means.

 

[TBi]

It's corporate data (email), corporate data should only be on corporate equipment that has been purchased for you if it has been deemed a necessary requirement for your job role.

Obviously I don't know how you access your corporate e-mail from home, but I would assume and expect (or at least hope!) it's through some sort of secure means.

Corporate e-mail at home is accessed via two means. A VPN tunnel to the corporate network and using outlook, or using exchange server's webmail service where you access your mail through your web browser. The second method can be accessed from any computer, be it your corporate laptop or the internet cafe down the road.

(BTW this wasn't about me, but someone else in work who wanted this access. Quite frankly i don't want to have all-hour access to my work e-mails )

 

[Evangelion]

Yes but why can't they just say that? Rather than some stupid excuse. Although i don't understand why i shouldn't be able to view my work emails on my phone when i can check them at home on my laptop over the net.

The task of the IT-department is to provide the users with a set of services and devices that they will then maintain for the users. That does NOT mean that the users could then bring them every device they happened to buy, and expect the IT-department to support it.

If your IT-department provides you with web-access to your email, great! That is a service they provide and support. They might even provide and support push email. But that does NOT mean that the user should expect to be able to buy any phone they want and then expect to use that phone to read his email. What propably happens is that IT-department will provide push-email _on devices that the IT-department supports_.

Especially since all they have to do is set up the account. Unlike an iPhone, they already supported the blackberry.

So, you think that since they support Blackberries, they should support iPhones as well? The logic of that assumption escapes me. We provide our users with push-email on their phones. We have standardized on two company-provided phones that we will provide that service on (and no, iPhones or Blackberries are not supported). Of course the user CAN buy a personal phone if they wish, but we do not support those phones, nor do we support push-email on those phones.

Would you agree that not allowing me to use my own blackberry, which they support and use, is just bloody annoying?

It might be annoying, but it's not unheard of. When they provide you with a service, they take responsibility of that service. You are now expecting them to provide you with a service on a device that is different from the ones they support (not all BB's are identical) on a network-service that is not under their control.

 

[yellow]

So you hate me? <sniff>



I would like to rebut by saying this: I hate corporate IT users.

1. They think they know computers. Actually they don't.
2. They don't understand corporate IT overlord directives. The 'security crap' is for your own good.
3. They ALWAYS lie. 'Did you delete the file? No! It just disappeared!'
4. They think that being unable to play a music CD = work stoppage.
5. They never listen and continue to make the same mistakes over and over.

Feel free to add your own additions to the list!

 

[TBi]

So, you think that since they support Blackberries, they should support iPhones as well? The logic of that assumption escapes me. We provide our users with push-email on their phones. We have standardized on two company-provided phones that we will provide that service on (and no, iPhones or Blackberries are not supported). Of course the user CAN buy a personal phone if they wish, but we do not support those phones, nor do we support push-email on those phones.
<snip>
It might be annoying, but it's not unheard of. When they provide you with a service, they take responsibility of that service. You are now expecting them to provide you with a service on a device that is different from the ones they support (not all BB's are identical) on a network-service that is not under their control.

I'm not talking about iPhones. I'm arguing about supporting a blackberry which is identical to the one they use. Same model/part number/network/firmware/everything except for the serial number. The only difference is that the one you have is your own personally purchased model.

I'm not arguing that they should support an iPhone, or a blackberry that is a different model (although why they couldn't support this i don't know). I'm arguing for an identical model.

Last bit of info, they support a different managers personal nokia.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Feel free to add your own additions to the list!

I have some general sympathy; there are ex-colleagues of min who insisted that streaming music all day on their PCs wasn't hurting anyone else... and then there's the people that used to send me 20mb attachments.

It seems like the kind of job that would make you get a little hostile at times... maybe you start off with the best of interests, but after time become ground down by users (or in my case, clients)... however, I have worked with some right IT twunts that have been more inflexible and hidebound than they need to be, especially when they're trying to tell you why a Mac definitely cannot integrate with a Windows corporate network, not for Office, but things like printer and drive sharing.

 

[TBi]

1. They think they know computers. Actually they don't.
2. They don't understand corporate IT overlord directives. The 'security crap' is for your own good.
3. They ALWAYS lie. 'Did you delete the file? No! It just disappeared!'
4. They think that being unable to play a music CD = work stoppage.
5. They never listen and continue to make the same mistakes over and over.

I agree with your list in general. It is the reason why most IT people are not very nice, they have to deal with arrogant idiot users every day and that wears thin after a while. I understand this.

However the problem comes when a user actually does know more than them. Or else the IT person expects you to be stupid.

My IT manager wouldn't let us have local admin rights on our lab computers because, and i quote: "If i give you Admin rights on that computer, you'll have admin rights on every computer in the center". I certainly know that is wrong and i know you'll agree.

Also i don't understand why CD's should not be allowed. I work better when listening to music.

 

[robbieduncan]

I work better when listening to music.

Then buy an iPod: CDs, even Music CDs can be an infection vector for unwanted software...

 

[Evangelion]

I'm not talking about iPhones. I'm arguing about supporting a blackberry which is identical to the one they use. Same model/part number/network/firmware/everything except for the serial number. The only difference is that the one you have is your own personally purchased model.

A personally purchased BB that is outside their inventory, management and control. There are lots of reasons to not support such devices, the very first being policy. If they have a policy that says "no personal devices are supported", it leaves very little wiggle-room. If they start making exceptions, then they would have to start making exceptions for everybody. And that is a road to madness.

Last bit of info, they support a different managers personal nokia.

Executives are a whole different matter. We have people high up in the foodchain that use some other phone, and we support them. But just because the people in top of the pecking-order have special-privileges does not mean that everyone should have them.

Also i don't understand why CD's should not be allowed. I work better when listening to music.

One of our users tried to listed a copy-protected CD on his laptop. It hung the entire machine, and we had to do a hard-reset on the computer.... Had he been using a Mac, we might have had to send the machine to the dealer for repair....

 

[brn2ski00]

To the OP: you are ignorant.

 

[ToddW]

You know, I have had cases where I agree with some of the stuff that everyone has stated and I disagree with some of the stuff that everyone has stated.

So, here is my opinion in a nutshell. Do some IT guys bug me, yeah! Do some IT guys not bug me, no. You gotta realize that a lot of their support calls or for stupid stuff, i.e. "I can't connect to the mail server!", "I can't check my home email on my work computer!", "How do I launch Word?" Hell, I can't blame some of them from being rude. I mean how many people lose their file their working on because they just didn't back it up to a server.

Yeah, I get in my share of arguments with administrators, but I basically just keep calm and let them understand why I called them, it is because I cannot fix it myself.

As an electrical engineer, I happen to know my way around a windows domain, do I like doing sys admin type of things? Hell no, that is why I'm not in IT. Do I sometimes have to do it because in our day and time every single close loop system you work on or anything you work with now you need to have some type of Window/Domain/Router/Networking IT knowledge.

As far as the time it takes for my computer to boot in the morning, yep it takes a long time. I've got all sorts of background stuff that runs and clogs up my system. When I get a computer refresh I make damn sure they give me a capable system to do my job. If it keeps lagging on me because of the background stuff they install, I put in a support ticket and make them fix it.

One good thing though, is they most of us engineers have local admin rights on my machine. I couldn't do my job without that. So I will give our IT department thanks for that.

Guys we live in a world today that if your IT infrastructure goes down then you are dead in the water. Certain precautions have to be made to protect the system. Things could be a lot worse. Give you IT guy a break, by him/her a beer, thank them for now being an ass all the time. They have just as much of a hard job as we all do. Be nice to them and they will be nice to you, well hopefully.

As far as BO and scruffy IT guys, I have seen engineers, IT guys, technicians, you name um and every single job as folks like that.

 

[yellow]

It's true, there are some serious douchebags in IT Support. I just want to make sure that it doesn't get over-generalized.

 

[Evangelion]

I think that one big factor in the resentment towards IT-departments is due to the fact that they deal with tools and devices that many of the users would use in any case. I mean, most people own a personal computer. Then they have a corporate-provided computer that is supported by the IT-department. At that point there are two things that might crop up:

a) "Why should I use the computer given to me by the IT-department, when I already have a computer?"

b) "I have used computers before, I know how these things work".

Feel free to substitute "computer" with "phone" or some other device or service. But in any case, both of those ways of thinking will lead to problems. In case A we get "douchebag IT-department" that will only support devices they have provided. In case B we get users who like to tinker with the equipment, leading to all kinds of issues, and who get annoyed when things start to break down due to that tinkering. And in both cases, the hostility is directed towards the IT-department.

 

[Sesshi]

Music CDs can be an infection vector for unwanted software...

I think this is one of the problems of IT support people: They talk gibberish.

 

[pilotError]

I think this is one of the problems of IT support people: They talk gibberish.

I know I tend to talk like Rudy in the old Fat Albert cartoons, but then again I'm in development

 

[robbieduncan]

I think this is one of the problems of IT support people: They talk gibberish.

I'm not support: I'm a developer.

 

[dejo]

Corporate IT people. Well, at least they aren't as bad as Red Sox fans!

 

[ZachsMacDaddy]

My IT manager wouldn't let us have local admin rights on our lab computers because, and i quote: "If i give you Admin rights on that computer, you'll have admin rights on every computer in the center". I certainly know that is wrong and i know you'll agree.

There's the problem right there. A MANAGER said that. We all know that it's the underlings that know what to do and most managers just think they do. I have had a few managers who know what is going on, but only a few.

I once watched my manager sit down to "help" answer the phones at the Help Desk. She proceeded to make up answers for an hour and totally misinforming all the users she talked to. If you don't know the answer, don't make up something. Come out and admit you don't know, but you'll find out. You look worse when you lie and the truth comes out.

That same manager bragged about her experience as a Novell administrator. Then when she gave all her training material to a co-worker to use, we found the test results from when she tried to get her certification and failed miserably several times.

Yes, I know I am generalizing the entire group of managers. Heck, Scott Adams gets paid to do it every day drawing Dilbert.

 

[7on]

I have some general sympathy; there are ex-colleagues of min who insisted that streaming music all day on their PCs wasn't hurting anyone else... and then there's the people that used to send me 20mb attachments.

It seems like the kind of job that would make you get a little hostile at times... maybe you start off with the best of interests, but after time become ground down by users (or in my case, clients)... however, I have worked with some right IT twunts that have been more inflexible and hidebound than they need to be, especially when they're trying to tell you why a Mac definitely cannot integrate with a Windows corporate network, not for Office, but things like printer and drive sharing.

Oh well, my IT people are pretty nice. They were going to get me a Mac but had to wait for my boss's approval (IT lacks all purchasing power, that's why there's a purchasing department). She of course said no because we have to keep compatibility with the branches. I suppose that's understandable, but the most I interact with the branches is updating their webpages. I sat in with her and an IT supervisor and she grilled us over how the Mac is not what is in the corporate world and how we can't support that (the IT just nodded and agreed). I have no problem supporting myself, but if she doesn't have a problem me missing deadlines because of machine lockup, then I suppose I don't have a problem either. Especially the hour or so where I couldn't do any work when IT had to fix an email problem on my machine.

I did convince them to put me back on XP (and they are actually rolling back all the Vista machines to XP eventually).

 

[dejo]

She of course said no because we have to keep compatibility with the branches.

Did you tell her that Macs can run XP also?

 

[7on]

Did you tell her that Macs can run XP also?

Yeah, but she said that just didn't seem productive
Plus they would have to purchase all new licenses for the software was a biggie. Hardware not a prob, as my current machine would just replace a slower one.

She also mentioned that I would always be stuck at my current position in the company or if I ever left favorite and the next person they hired was a Windows guy? Well, good luck finding a designer with a college degree that's a Windows guy

Sigh... It's good experience, pays well, and hopefully in 2 years time I can get the job I really want.

 

[neoserver]

Feel free to add your own additions to the list!

I work part-time at an academic institution. When rolling out an image to all the lab workstations that the students use, we always ask the instructors to test the software. This is of course to make sure that we don't have any issues during the term, when it becomes inconvenient to push a new image out.

Guess what.. They never do test the software, and then they complain about how we can't seem to do the job properly when things fail. Like we're supposed to know how to use and test all of their specialized software? Especially when there's new versions every year. Give me a break.

 

[steveza]

On the Blackberry side a small point. Adding a Blackberry device to a Blackberry Enterprise system isn't free. You need a device licenses and a subscription to RIM for the device. Your subscription may be paid for by your contract but IT would still have to come up wth the license cost. That's alright if it's just one person but I'm sure that word would get out and then everyone would want their personal BB adding in too. Then that would bring up another issue: server capacity. Servers aren't free either and it may be that the current system is specified fir a certain number of devices.

As a consultant I spend a fair amount of my day dealing with unrealistic requests but along with my team we manage to put solutions in where possible and implement workarounds in most other cases. From a user point of view the only thing that matters is their device or machine - the big picture is our problem to sort out.