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PancakeTransmission posted:Watch out, that's when you get caught out and called directly to fix issues instead of via the service desk "because you did it quickly last time". Or they'll call service desk but demand to be transferred to you "because he's done it before" and then tickets don't get logged (because you were actually busy doing other work on your non-service desk role) and then the whole process goes to poo poo! I manage a level 2 Desktop Support team and regularly refer to this as "feeding the pigeons." As the team helps end users who circumvent the Service Desk or the process, then it sets a precedent for more "end users" to circumvent the process or "pigeons" to congregate to get fed.
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Feb 10, 2019 17:27
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After 3 years of constant fuckups, incomplete/drawn out completion projects, and missed deadlines/broken promises, guess who was on the call explaining that we finally got sick of this treatment from our prime contractor (bonus: we're their biggest client), met with their executives, and let them know that we would be canceling all but 3 outstanding jobs (cancelled jobs are worth almost 6 million dollars) and that we would considering reestablishing our business relationship if those 3 went perfectly. On a 100% unrelated note, I'd like to express my screaming, incoherent rage over Cisco's lead times on orders. If I order it, I shouldn't have to wait 7 weeks for a product you highlight on your loving website.
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Feb 11, 2019 01:21
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To go along with the above discussion, I agree, don't do anything you don't have to. There are some internal procedures our company has that drive me nuts. The process of getting feedback to certain departments the correct way is long and convoluted. But if a customer isn't following a process? Hell no, I'm going to not deal with that poo poo. We're at the tail end of a statewide rollout. Counties have a handoff to the help desk at the end of their week of onsite support. Yet, two months later they will reach out to the trainers/readiness coordinators if they feel something isn't quite right. Next thing you know, that person is forwarding to the help desk and me (lead architect on the project) to get feedback. Apparently they are telling the customer to go ahead and reach out to them, even though they are supposed to be going to the help desk so tickets can be created, etc. I tell them they should not being doing that, but it keeps happening. If a customer reaches out to me that shouldn't be, I just forward that poo poo on to the help desk with a few sentences to put them on the right track if I think I know what's going on. The other big one is scope. Sticking to the project scope was hammered into everyone's heads years ago. My go-to phrase when asked if something is possible by a customer is "That is possible from a technical standpoint" so they don't think I'm saying yes to implementing anything. Project managers are always so concerned about hours, but they love sneaking in dumb poo poo to make an already happy paying customer happier. You use the phrase out of scope and someone's getting angry that you're worrying about that because that's not your concern. Well, when my team is the one who actually has to do the dumb poo poo you agree to that we aren't getting paid for and the help desk has to support in the future, yes, it is my concern. If I'm doing something, it should be because we are getting paid for it, and years down the line I'm not going to be dragged into supporting this wacky solution you agreed we'd do that involved custom code because it wasn't in the base product. GI_Clutch fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Feb 11, 2019 |
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Feb 11, 2019 02:14
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Wibla posted:There are places that don't allow you to use headphones? In open plan offices? My employer paid for my fancy noise cancelling headphones because tech && open office. There are also places to physically hide out to focus when it’s necessary. Solo work requires uninterrupted time chunks, collaboration work does better in group environments. People interrupt me frequently when I’m at my desk with headphones on, I didn’t notice how bad it was or how much I was expecting to be interrupted until therapist made me time how long I could go without getting distracted at my desk. Announcing that I’m going off the grid for a few hours then physically disappearing into a side area does the trick. I also made an Alfred rule to turn off all my notifications for x length of time. Highly recommend.
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Feb 11, 2019 05:34
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Oh no doubt about it. Luckily most people don't abuse the caller ID and don't call me for whatever after this ticket is done, but it's happened before. oh rly posted:I manage a level 2 Desktop Support team and regularly refer to this as "feeding the pigeons." As the team helps end users who circumvent the Service Desk or the process, then it sets a precedent for more "end users" to circumvent the process or "pigeons" to congregate to get fed. This happens when we show up at certain departments. Someone will actually do the right thing and make a ticket, and then we show up and several people mob will whoever came. Feeding the pigeons is right. On an actual poo poo pissing me off note, our datacenter holding all our VMs died. It was down all day and in the afternoon I had to go in. I was there for hours and had to touch every cart. Then when I get home I get a ticket for two more. Seems like everytime I turn around, there's a major downtime in something. The users are tired of it and so am I.
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Feb 11, 2019 06:17
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GI_Clutch posted:To go along with the above discussion, I agree, don't do anything you don't have to. There are some internal procedures our company has that drive me nuts. The process of getting feedback to certain departments the correct way is long and convoluted. But if a customer isn't following a process? Hell no, I'm going to not deal with that poo poo. We're at the tail end of a statewide rollout. Counties have a handoff to the help desk at the end of their week of onsite support. Yet, two months later they will reach out to the trainers/readiness coordinators if they feel something isn't quite right. Next thing you know, that person is forwarding to the help desk and me (lead architect on the project) to get feedback. Apparently they are telling the customer to go ahead and reach out to them, even though they are supposed to be going to the help desk so tickets can be created, etc. I tell them they should not being doing that, but it keeps happening. If a customer reaches out to me that shouldn't be, I just forward that poo poo on to the help desk with a few sentences to put them on the right track if I think I know what's going on. Typically doesn't happen
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Feb 11, 2019 12:51
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So we hired an experienced iOS developer contractor to assist with the mobile app I am the main developer for. We have had him for 3 weeks now, and I have come to the conclusion that this poor guy is cursed. Week 1: he injured himself during the Great Iowa Arctic Time and lost 1 day to that. Week 2: his grandmother dies early in the week, so he misses a couple days that week for the funeral Week 3: while he was gone to that funeral his 19yo son had a brain aneurysm and died. It's just been escalating disasters since he started, culminating with that doozy.
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Feb 11, 2019 23:33
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Khisanth Magus posted:So we hired an experienced iOS developer contractor to assist with the mobile app I am the main developer for. We have had him for 3 weeks now, and I have come to the conclusion that this poor guy is cursed. HOLY poo poo 
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Feb 11, 2019 23:46
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Khisanth Magus posted:So we hired an experienced iOS developer contractor to assist with the mobile app I am the main developer for. We have had him for 3 weeks now, and I have come to the conclusion that this poor guy is cursed. I've had some bad months before, but nothing close to that.
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Feb 12, 2019 00:01
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angry armadillo posted:I like our version of "out of scope" which is to ask for a change request where the project sponsor has to approve all the extras that *demanding manager* is asking for. Sadly, on the project I'm referencing, it's the project sponsor who is approving it and cringing when I mention scope. He's actually involved in the day to day as it's the largest project we've ever had. And as far as I know, there are no $0 change requests being created. It's just phone calls or emails saying we'll do something. The hope was that there would be a trade off where we did these items and got in contract bonkers items with no use case taken out. Of course, those types of conversations were never solidified, so now we're nearing the end and trying to get stuff straightened out. Being our biggest customer, we've been playing politics and bending over backwards to make them happy to get additional contracts. Once we got those, we continued bending over. On one hand, I can't wait for this project to be over. On the other, it keeps me working from home, so I'd love to just keep milking this thing with add-ons until the cows come home.
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Feb 12, 2019 00:15
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Son of owner just came back from a week in LA and announced a large initiative to make our entire logistical chain, from farm to shelf, blockchain based
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Feb 12, 2019 02:32
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tactlessbastard posted:Son of owner just came back from a week in LA and announced a large initiative to make our entire logistical chain, from farm to shelf, blockchain based Has anyone asked him to explain what the blockchain is?
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Feb 12, 2019 02:39
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Weedle posted:Has anyone asked him to explain what the blockchain is? I had already been there 10.5 hours. I said, 'cool' and went home. I guess I'll find out
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Feb 12, 2019 02:44
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It just means he's going to be installing miners on all company devices
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Feb 12, 2019 02:45
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tactlessbastard posted:Son of owner just came back from a week in LA and announced a large initiative to make our entire logistical chain, from farm to shelf, blockchain based There needs to be a whitepaper or case study about shooting this poo poo down.
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Feb 12, 2019 04:48
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Khisanth Magus posted:So we hired an experienced iOS developer contractor to assist with the mobile app I am the main developer for. We have had him for 3 weeks now, and I have come to the conclusion that this poor guy is cursed. At this point I think you either have to fire him or live with the fact that you're gonna be the one that dies in Week 4 or 5 .
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Feb 12, 2019 08:14
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tactlessbastard posted:Son of owner just came back from a week in LA and announced a large initiative to make our entire logistical chain, from farm to shelf, blockchain based A friend recently had to talk someone who founded a pot startup out of focusing on the same thing by explaining that the idea of end-to-end supply chain tracking is not a new or revolutionary idea, and was not created by, does not require, and is not the same thing as blockchain.
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Feb 12, 2019 12:32
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The weekly attempt to coax people into using packet captures as a troubleshooting tool rather than spraying ACLs into a firewall has resumed
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Feb 12, 2019 16:30
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Thanks Ants posted:The weekly attempt to coax people into using packet captures as a troubleshooting tool rather than spraying ACLs into a firewall has resumed Please allow all communication on ports 35,000-65,000. Failure to do so may result in unsatisfactory audio quality as we will pick a random port in this range.
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Feb 12, 2019 17:16
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Thanks Ants posted:The weekly attempt to coax people into using packet captures as a troubleshooting tool rather than spraying ACLs into a firewall has resumed I seriously don't know why packet captures and log files are so abjectly terrifying to so many people. Why not find the actual problem rather than just throw poo poo at a fan and see what comes back?
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Feb 12, 2019 17:45
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ChubbyThePhat posted:I seriously don't know why packet captures and log files are so abjectly terrifying to so many people. Why not find the actual problem rather than just throw poo poo at a fan and see what comes back? But then there's a chance (read: high chance) the packet captures show that the problem is their own and they can't just blame the network until the network people give up and solve it for them anyways. Clearly that's not acceptable.
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Feb 12, 2019 18:09
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Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm you raise a good point.
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Feb 12, 2019 18:13
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"Hey Macaroni, since you've been complaining that we don't document enough around here, you get to be the scribe for our weekly team meetings! HAW HAW HAW!" [27 documented action items later] "Well poo poo, I guess we wouldn't have been able to keep track of those on our own. Thanks!"  is approaching, I can smell it in the damp winter air...plus I've had three phone interviews over the past two weeks, so something has gotta stick.
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Feb 12, 2019 21:37
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tactlessbastard posted:Son of owner just came back from a week in LA and announced a large initiative to make our entire logistical chain, from farm to shelf, blockchain based He's been talking to an Oracle sales rep. Bail out!
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Feb 12, 2019 21:59
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The Macaroni posted:"Hey Macaroni, since you've been complaining that we don't document enough around here, you get to be the scribe for our weekly team meetings! HAW HAW HAW!" [27 documented action items later] "Well poo poo, I guess we wouldn't have been able to keep track of those on our own. Thanks!" "Message received: you will actively punish me for trying to improve the business. I will shift my output level to maintenance mode."
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Feb 12, 2019 22:04
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pixaal posted:Please allow all communication on ports 35,000-65,000. Failure to do so may result in unsatisfactory audio quality as we will pick a random port in this range. Asterisk defaults to 5000, so you better make it 5,000 to 65,000 just to be sure
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Feb 12, 2019 22:29
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Che Delilas posted:"Message received: you will actively punish me for trying to improve the business. I will shift my output level to maintenance mode." I think there is a time and place for making people responsible for the things they are raising a fuss about. I have team members who will derail meetings for 20 or 30 minutes asking why we don't have a perfect solutions for some things (and admittedly sometimes we don't even have a tolerable solution) but he never takes ownership for fixing stuff. So sometimes I have to make to clear to him that since every is working on other things and he is the most passionate about the problem then it would make most sense for him to rearrange his workload to fix this.
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Feb 12, 2019 23:48
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captkirk posted:I think there is a time and place for making people responsible for the things they are raising a fuss about. I have team members who will derail meetings for 20 or 30 minutes asking why we don't have a perfect solutions for some things (and admittedly sometimes we don't even have a tolerable solution) but he never takes ownership for fixing stuff. So sometimes I have to make to clear to him that since every is working on other things and he is the most passionate about the problem then it would make most sense for him to rearrange his workload to fix this. Doesn't really sound like you are managing your team based on those three lines. Set a 1-1 meeting to discuss it and if possible make x their project. If its not, they you arn't wasting the whole teams time. Further to that, in meetings, only cover whats on the agenda compiled from your stuff and their beforehand. .2c
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Feb 13, 2019 04:07
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captkirk posted:I think there is a time and place for making people responsible for the things they are raising a fuss about. I have team members who will derail meetings for 20 or 30 minutes asking why we don't have a perfect solutions for some things (and admittedly sometimes we don't even have a tolerable solution) but he never takes ownership for fixing stuff. So sometimes I have to make to clear to him that since every is working on other things and he is the most passionate about the problem then it would make most sense for him to rearrange his workload to fix this. Maybe he was completely fabricating the tone, but anything remotely like what he said sounds vindictive to me, not encouraging ownership.
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Feb 13, 2019 04:42
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ChubbyThePhat posted:I seriously don't know why packet captures and log files are so abjectly terrifying to so many people. Why not find the actual problem rather than just throw poo poo at a fan and see what comes back? “My program can’t copy files anymore! Happy can you help me?” “Do you have an error message?” “No.” “Does the program create a log?” “Yes, let me check.” “Oh there is something written here about permissions.” It repeats almost every day with different easy problems. He also refuses to google standard Windows error messages and in the rare cases where he does, he rephrases his google query to stuff like “Program X doesn’t like to copy files”. I mean googling is a skill, but come on.
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Feb 13, 2019 11:25
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fist4jesus posted:Doesn't really sound like you are managing your team based on those three lines. Sorry, I was loose with my language. I'm referring to a peer, I'm not his team lead, just a fellow the member. We have a flatish structure so there are multiple projects/areas of interest I tend to drive forward but I am not a team lead so there is a bit of managing sideways.
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Feb 13, 2019 12:09
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Happy Litterbox posted:This. My coworker drives me insane by refusing to look at logs. We had a similar thing with a systems developer who claimed to know Linux when we interviewed him. Only for him to constantly barrage us via Hipchat with “I’m getting this error.” And seemed to spend half his time fixing his Linux install rather than the job we were paying him to do. I used to be a sys admin (manager now) so I ended up helping him and eventually we had to let him go. He could just google the error message and the first link would fix it, but instead he seemed to need me to hold his hand through the entire thing. As a dev house we use OSX (don’t ask me why) and the thing is he could’ve just used that! It’s idiot proof! But he really wanted Linux...
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Feb 13, 2019 12:58
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ChubbyThePhat posted:I seriously don't know why packet captures and log files are so abjectly terrifying to so many people. Why not find the actual problem rather than just throw poo poo at a fan and see what comes back? Another one is checking some obvious things and then wasting the rest of the day just loving around on a product that has vendor support. Open the drat ticket, it's what we pay for.
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Feb 13, 2019 13:11
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Old Grasshopper posted:We had a similar thing with a systems developer who claimed to know Linux when we interviewed him. Only for him to constantly barrage us via Hipchat with “I’m getting this error.” And seemed to spend half his time fixing his Linux install rather than the job we were paying him to do. Either I'm a spectacular idiot or that's not true because I spent over an hour last night fighting OSX so I could get other work done. Could just be docker on OSX though. Although your story is funny, if you're going to request non-standard setups you should be able to support yourself.
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Feb 13, 2019 13:49
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buttchugging adderall posted:Either I'm a spectacular idiot or that's not true because I spent over an hour last night fighting OSX so I could get other work done. Could just be docker on OSX though You are correct - it’s why we have a standard dev laptop build for our dev MacBooks, complete with our own team wiki for when you hit issues written for OSX... It’s just this chap with his non-standard setup 
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Feb 13, 2019 13:59
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Comcast update: They are marking the utility lines in apparent prep for installing a new line! Wish I knew for sure because there has been absolutely no word from Comcast, nor has the ticket been updated with any information. And none of the local people will give out direct contact info. Here's hoping they don't cut the Frontier line when they bore/dig. (they probably will) Edit: 14 days now! 
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Feb 13, 2019 15:30
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The Macaroni posted:"Hey Macaroni, since you've been complaining that we don't document enough around here, you get to be the scribe for our weekly team meetings! HAW HAW HAW!" [27 documented action items later] "Well poo poo, I guess we wouldn't have been able to keep track of those on our own. Thanks!" The exact same thing happened to me. Team meetings quickly turned into a deep technical discussion between three people who had never discussed the topic (or even thought about it) before the meeting. Everybody else checked out, got on their laptops to start working, and nobody ever checked back in. It was a complete waste of time if you didn't yell out your technical question first. I complained two weeks in a row to my team lead, implying he needed to take better leadership and control of the meeting. Instead he put me in charge because I 'clearly have a lot of ideas of what this meeting should look like'. I rule the meeting with an iron fist. I cut people off from tech chat by assigning follow-ups and moving on. I skip topics presented with no notes or points of discussion. I constantly assign ownership instead of leaving open ended questions in the notes. Meeting attendence is way up, people rarely check out, and we get through the entire agenda every time. My team lead is completely indifferent to this change and hasn't acknowledged any of the improvements, or supported the changes in any way, which is just super cool.
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Feb 13, 2019 15:43
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Our VAR is driving me crazy and I’m wondering if my expectations are unrealistic. We’ve bought several hundred Lenovo laptops for student use over the past year, and every time there’s a problematic or DOA unit in a shipment, it takes loving forever to get it replaced, and our account representative is usually unhelpful. Most recently, one laptop in a shipment of 24 registers about one in twenty presses of its power button, so obviously I want to return it and get one in good working order. I call our rep on Monday, give him the deets, and he says he’ll process the return and get me a return shipment label within 24 hours. That was February 4th, and as of earlier this morning I still had not heard a thing from him, so I called him back and asked him where we are in the process. He tells me Lenovo rejected the return for reasons that are not entirely clear to me but apparently have something to do with the fact that nobody tried to contact Lenovo tech support before requesting the return. (I didn’t do this because I don’t think I should have to spend time troubleshooting a hardware issue for a unit that I just received and is still in its return window.) This is the first VAR I’ve dealt with and I’m wondering whether it’s reasonable for me to be annoyed by this or if this is just how things are. It seems to me that if you are acting as a middleman between an OEM and a customer, and the OEM is giving you the runaround on the return of a defective unit, you should just go ahead and swap the customer’s unit ASAP rather than making them wait for you to resolve your dispute with the OEM. I also think that, as a matter of courtesy, if you tell a customer that you will send them something tomorrow, and then it’s a week later and you still haven’t sent it, you should let them know what the holdup is instead of not communicating at all. Am I expecting too much?
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Feb 13, 2019 17:30
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Pissing me off: we use a vendor to manager our online portal (logins, account management, etc.). They did a major upgrade on their software last month. Following that upgrade, a bunch of functions our customers used to be able to do stopped working; their response is that our core database software is giving them error messages, and that we need to get our core people to fix it. Our core hasn't changed anything, and when I point this out, I get "well, pull us an example transaction from before the change from your end. Also, have your core tell us what we should be sending." Motherfucker, what you should be sending is what you were sending before. You know, before the upgrade you did that broke poo poo. On one ticket, I've had to post the same thing three times before the dude actually read what I wrote; another, when the guy on the ticket pointed to our core database, I referenced the three other tickets we have open that have "core database issues," and the fact that our core database hasn't changed in months, but their software has; the dude tried to say it was a pre-existing issue, and one of my ops people pointed out that the error message we're getting now only started after the upgrade. He then posted the same note he'd posted previously, to which I posted the same note I had previously (this is separate from the ticket I had to post the same note to three times). They really, really don't want this to be their responsibility. And now their advice is "oh, you have to do this host adapter upgrade." An upgrade to fix the upgrade. That they offered that with no context. And then gave the details after I asked, which of course took a day, and when they gave potential times for the upgrade, didn't give me a time zone (wasting yet another day). I loving hate these people.
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Feb 13, 2019 18:33
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Things not pissing me off: boss said that he thinks I'm under-compensated and is advising our CIO to give me a raise.
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Feb 13, 2019 23:33
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