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22 Eargesplitten posted:Interacting with other departments is so loving frustrating here. Request that one of the AWS admins give a list of people access to a folder that he can see himself on the AWS portal page? “What’s the file path and why do they need it?” You are the one being unreasonable here. When you request permissions you should be explicit about what you need and explain why you need it. You created the extra interaction, not him. E: new page. Pissing me off: my boss put up about 40 passive aggressive signs around our area because people are super loud outside the conference rooms instead of just talking to them like a human and telling them to shut the gently caress up. Comradephate fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Jul 3, 2019 |
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Jul 3, 2019 02:54
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Maybe I need to clarify: we’re a software company that gives customers the option of doing hosting with us. The AWS team doesn’t have a contact address/number, so we get requests for them and forward them, assuming it’s coming from someone in a position with the authority to make changes. And I could understand if the request was the equivalent of “make these people domain admin” (which is against policy, the farthest they can get into the environment is our app or network folders) but it’s requesting that a few existing accounts get access to a pre-existing network folder, from our client’s IT admin. He is purely avoiding work, just like when he argued that a client didn’t actually need more than half the resources that our official spec sheet said they did. The manager (who is actually the only helpful person I’ve interacted with on that team) says they don’t have the staffing to take direct customer contact. They must be really understaffed if they can’t help customers without kicking stuff back to us multiple times or fix their environment so that a critical service doesn’t fail to load on 75% of the instances every time they come up after doing monthly maintenance. Which it has been doing for at least the past three years. Or make some way for client admins to kick their users off the environment to free up a license when the user forgets to log off before they leave. Especially considering I could whip up a PowerShell script for that in 5 minutes, make it UX friendly in a few hours, and I barely know Powershell.
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Jul 3, 2019 03:20
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It's been just about two days since the launch of our ticketing system's self-service - even though it's been technically usable since 2016 - and some bigwig already has their knickers in enough of a twist about it to insist that when we pick up a ticket, we manually email the user letting them know what their ticket number is and that the ticket has been assigned. The ticketing system already sends an email to the user with their ticket number, and can also send them an email when we assign the ticket if that functionality is switched on. So unless upper management is looking for an excuse to crucify someone for not following proper procedure, this is an extra step in handling tickets which just doesn't need to exist. If it's actually important that users know their ticket has been accepted, why not just turn on the auto-mail function? E: Also pissing me off, I have the 4th off but not the 5th. dragonshardz fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Jul 3, 2019 |
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Jul 3, 2019 03:56
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I've been working on a project for the last six months to revamp the data that we collect from our support centers. Specifically, the way we categorize incoming contacts. Today, we have an incredibly complicated taxonomy. There are over four thousand possible options one of our agents can pick. Literally anything you can think of is there. However, as the primary consumer of this data, I discovered that it is all but useless. The taxonomy field had no underlying philosophy when it was created, has not been curated since, has been modified on an ad-hoc basis over the course of years, and end result is poorly understood by, well, everyone. This means that, despite there being a taxo for literally any possible call I could dream of, fully twenty percent of our calls don't receive a taxo at all. The agents just type something in manually. A good third of cases are improperly coded when a taxo is selected. Sometimes more specific/relevant entry exists, and sometimes the thing that was picked was clearly just something that could be rationalized enough for the agent not to get in trouble for picking it. So we're looking at half or more of our cases being coded incorrectly. And that's just the ones I know about. Therefore, we need to fix it. I (and my team) sat down with every possible consumer of the data. My team is the primary consumer, but there are others who utilize it for various purposes. We gathered all their feedback. We reviewed everything. We discovered what people actually wanted from it. Ultimately, we settled on "why did the customer contact Support" as the only thing everyone wanted. This was a high-level, generalized reason, like "thing is broken, plz fix". To get a bit more granularity, we're adding a second question, "which is the most relevant detail" to appear at the end of the contact. This presents the agent with a curated list of poo poo we actually care about tracking, with a big "Other" bucket for all the random reasons. We don't care about anything else. Only "Why did they contact Support?" and "Which is the most relevant detail?". Two very simple questions. The concept was approved by all stakeholders. The first round of high-level entries was approved by all stakeholders. The full list of entries was approved by all stakeholders. We had twelve, one loving dozen, "calibration" meetings in which we met with assorted stakeholders to make sure they could translate real-life cases to something. The first eleven were fine. Minor issues, usually someone hung up on their pet peeve, but generally within striking distance. The twelfth and final one blew up. Because one person, just one, got hung up on some semantics. Which turned into him suddenly going down the road of all these weird hypothetical situations, that did not occur, do not occur, and if they occur in the future, we should treat them as the one-off situations they are. But he wouldn't budge. Others started chiming in and agreeing. The whole thing turned into a complete poo poo-show. Suddenly, everyone acted surprised at the methodology. The things we'd been putting in front of them, regularly, for months, were suddenly being questioned again. I'm so tired of this project. It is not a difficult concept, and I am continually astounded by the banality and sheer stupidity of the objections. And, for the most part, the people objecting have only an oblique stake anyway, but got shoehorned in for some goddamn reason. I have to do three more of these meetings tomorrow. I don't know if I can take it.
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Jul 3, 2019 05:08
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Zone out during the meeting, ignore his input and proceed as planned. If he shitfits afterwards just say his input was taken under advisement and applied where relevant during development (ie; "we made a catch-all 'Other' category for situations like you presented").
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Jul 3, 2019 05:23
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What he said. This sounds like some idiot flexing. Shutting them down (and out) is the way to go.
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Jul 3, 2019 11:26
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Echoing the statement. Ignore him and move on. This is the type of activity where there will always be someone who is unhappy. I've performed similar initiatives in the past. Your journey and observations are spot on. What is key is finding a happy medium where the majority of your incoming contacts can be categorized properly. There are always going to be exceptions. You already have a plan to handle the exceptions by adding "Other." What I've done with any fields using "Other" is force a 2nd mandatory "Other Reason" field to appear to force the person to explain why they're using "Other." At some point down the road, you review all the "Other Reasons" and add them to your taxonomy if needed.
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Jul 3, 2019 13:36
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Unfortunately this guy riled up enough people that it’s far more than just him now.
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Jul 3, 2019 14:09
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ConfusedUs posted:Unfortunately this guy riled up enough people that it’s far more than just him now. Nod, smile, zone out. Other category. You took their feedback and used it in consideration against your existing data from the primary consumers and found (with diagrams if need be) that the cases presented were very extreme outliers unlikely to occur in regular use. And are covered under the "Other" Category without being an edge case impacting categorization like the previous system.
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Jul 3, 2019 14:22
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Echoing everyone else's sentiment. This seems strongly like a "Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" situation. If you ship it, and you're correct that all of their concerns are about situations that never actually happen, people will forget about those concerns.
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Jul 3, 2019 14:32
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Does the guy that went down impossible hypothetical realities have grey hair? It sucks to be ageist but we got a gaggle of them at my place and you can't do anything without addressing every possible timeline. It basically guarantees nothing ever gets done, but retirement age dweebs gets to feel like they're having an impact.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:27
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xzzy posted:Does the guy that went down impossible hypothetical realities have grey hair? It sucks to be ageist but we got a gaggle of them at my place and you can't do anything without addressing every possible timeline. It basically guarantees nothing ever gets done, but retirement age dweebs gets to feel like they're having an impact. No. He's actually a direct peer of mine (in another department) who usually has his head on straight. This was very much out of left field. The problem, unfortunately, rapidly grew beyond just him. It's not something I can ignore and gloss over, as much as I wish it were. I spent hours this week writing guidelines for the project as a whole, and definitions for all the major terms. I literally had to define what the word "failed" meant, and many more equally banal things, so our QA department could properly score people's usage. Apparently "does the taxonomy make sense?" is too broad. Ugh.
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Jul 3, 2019 15:31
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Well, thankfully I’m not in trouble for yesterday, the manager was trying to figure out why morale us so low in this team (he manages the sister team, which is doing a lot better). I might be in trouble if this loving BOFH doesn’t just add the loving shortcut for these users, though. He’s not even giving them new permissions, they have rwe permissions on the folder, they just can’t currently see it without jumping through hoops. And this rear end in a top hat is acting like I’m wanting him to give these people nuclear loving launch codes. In the time he’s spent trying to think up more questions so we give up, he could have been done with it. God I want to take this guy’s job so badly.
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Jul 3, 2019 18:25
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I really wish they put out printer drivers that only used the main paper cassette with plain letter paper and that's loving it. I'm so tired of having to adjust them because software or the user changed it to some stupid edgecase crap nobody ever uses. No I don't need the manual feed tray No I don't need to print on cardstock No I don't print on loving envelopes.
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Jul 3, 2019 18:43
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skooma512 posted:I really wish they put out printer drivers that only used the main paper cassette with plain letter paper and that's loving it. I'm so tired of having to adjust them because software or the user changed it to some stupid edgecase crap nobody ever uses. Fun fact about my workplace: The label printers, for some reason, print "envelope". No idea why, but they do. So if you accidentally tell it to print a label to a regular printer, the printer gets a "wrong size" error and asks for an envelope in the manual feed tray. I have no idea why, since the labels are 8"x6".
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Jul 3, 2019 18:51
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In fact, just make a laser printer that has a single input tray, a single output tray, a single paper path, no finishing options. No nonsense, less things to gently caress up.
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Jul 3, 2019 18:54
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nielsm posted:In fact, just make a laser printer that has a single input tray, a single output tray, a single paper path, no finishing options. No nonsense, less things to gently caress up. Last face it though, no matter how much you try to hand-hold people.. They WILL find someway to gently caress even that up.
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Jul 3, 2019 18:58
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nielsm posted:In fact, just make a laser printer that has a single input tray, a single output tray, a single paper path, no finishing options. No nonsense, less things to gently caress up. I was going to link my home use brother hll2350dw here but I realised even that has a manual feed fold out tray
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Jul 3, 2019 19:02
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Hi I am running a ton of glue jobs in production that use hundreds of IP addresses in the same subnet that I chose without consulting anyone and I'm getting errors that there aren't any IP addresses available, please advise
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Jul 3, 2019 19:15
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nielsm posted:In fact, just make a laser printer that has a single input tray, a single output tray, a single paper path, no finishing options. No nonsense, less things to gently caress up. I spent $45 on a HP 1018 probably close to 15 years ago now, and it is still going strong. It meets all your criteria except that there is a second input tray, sorta. USB connection only. No buttons besides an on/off switch. No LCD screen. Single paper path. Absolutely no frills. Just prints. I hope it never dies because there is no printer currently on the market that I wish to deal with on my own time. 
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Jul 3, 2019 19:19
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Comradephate posted:please advise 
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Jul 3, 2019 19:33
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During my daily rummaging, I discovered a large production issue. One group was not doing their reconciliation, which should have exposed it weeks ago. And it shouldn't have existed in the first place, but the higher-ranking than me person implementing it didn't bother doing a complete test before going live. Lol I am never getting promoted.
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Jul 3, 2019 20:27
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Pissing me off: My code being accidentally reverted this morning, collateral damage from someone trying to revert some unrelated bad code. Pissing me off more: I reviewed the reversion PR and didn't see my own loving code in there and approved it  My current team lead at least gets that it's been one of those weeks and gave me explicit permission to knock off early and start enjoying the long holiday weekend (so many people were going to take off Friday anyway they just said there's no point in anyone coming in, just have fun).
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Jul 3, 2019 20:52
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Hey boss, I was able to increase the amount of traffic our internal CRM can handle by 10 times over, saving literally thousands of man-hours every year. "Thanks, unrelated request: please paste the link to our customer newsletter to our newsletter archive." Cool. Cool and normal.
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Jul 3, 2019 23:02
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First of May posted:Hey boss, I was able to increase the amount of traffic our internal CRM can handle by 10 times over, saving literally thousands of man-hours every year. Put it back.
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Jul 3, 2019 23:20
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Pissing me off: Being promised I'd hear back after that interview within a day, but I didn't, and then we had the 4 day weekend (no one worked on Friday at my company, I'm sure that happened at this other place, too). I REAAALLY need to hear by Friday if my giving notice is going to line up with this trip. I'm thinking no news is good news for now, though, as a rejection takes 5 seconds to pack up and fire off. They don't seem like the type to ghost me after getting so far. EDIT: Update came in from the recruiter that apparently the HR gal was out last Wed/Thurs/Fri, so she's meeting with the Director of Engineering with this afternoon about my interview. He had planned to do that Wednesday, so I guess he didn't know she was going to be out. BaronVonVaderham fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 17:09
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BaronVonVaderham posted:Pissing me off: Being promised I'd hear back after that interview within a day, but I didn't, and then we had the 4 day weekend (no one worked on Friday at my company, I'm sure that happened at this other place, too). I REAAALLY need to hear by Friday if my giving notice is going to line up with this trip. Rooting for you
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Jul 8, 2019 19:51
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Yea, last week was terrible in terms of interview productivity. I've got two great options that are working through the process (including one from cheque_some), and everybody was gone from Wednesday on. I'm both excited to talk to more people about how awesome I am and how you should employ me right away, and utterly exhausted by the prospect.
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Jul 8, 2019 20:00
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Wizard of the Deep posted:I'm both excited to talk to more people about how awesome I am and how you should employ me right away, and utterly exhausted by the prospect. This is the best description of how I feel right now  Maybe the biggest disappointment with my current company is I was really hoping to be here long-term....so I didn't have to go through this exhausting process again so soon.
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Jul 8, 2019 20:03
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BaronVonVaderham posted:Maybe the biggest disappointment with my current company is I was really hoping to be here long-term....so I didn't have to go through this exhausting process again so soon. I felt the same way about my last company until they off-shored half my group, and encouraged me to spend all my time exploring new opportunities 
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Jul 8, 2019 20:05
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Wizard of the Deep posted:I felt the same way about my last company until they off-shored half my group, and encouraged me to spend all my time exploring new opportunities This is why I am glad I work for a small family owned company. The owner and his son who will eventually take over are both absolutely against out-sourcing of any kind. Just hope we don't ever get bought up by some larger competitor.
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Jul 8, 2019 20:10
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They changed my new team. Again. This is like the 4th time since I first heard about the re-org. But I'm still on this other now-defunct team to finish this project in the meantime and expected to attend meetings for both. I loving give up. This place is a dumpster fire.
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Jul 8, 2019 20:19
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Since it usually seems to come up, how do you explain during interviews that your got fired because a PM with a god complex used you as a scapegoat directly to the CIO for a project being late?
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Jul 9, 2019 00:57
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Khisanth Magus posted:Since it usually seems to come up, how do you explain during interviews that your got fired because a PM with a god complex used you as a scapegoat directly to the CIO for a project being late? I'd imagine it's best to not mention the getting fired part.
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Jul 9, 2019 01:15
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Khisanth Magus posted:Since it usually seems to come up, how do you explain during interviews that your got fired because a PM with a god complex used you as a scapegoat directly to the CIO for a project being late? "I completed my role in the project I was brought on for and decided to move on to new and exciting opportunities"
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Jul 9, 2019 01:45
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Cat Army 
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Fourth of July weekend was good! Until my foster daughters sister called us because her two-year-old son was mauled by their German Shepherd and had to be life-flighted to the hospital across the state! That kind of hosed our weekend. I did get drunk though.
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Jul 9, 2019 02:13
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Speaking of interviews I get to start doing some this week! (they are expanding my team by quite a bit) I'm thinking of asking what do you do when you meet Buddha on the road, but might also ask why you're not helping the tortoise flipped over in the desert.
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Jul 9, 2019 03:36
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Scaramouche posted:Speaking of interviews I get to start doing some this week!... Not for long, apparently! 
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Jul 9, 2019 03:47
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Not for long, apparently! Don't listen to this guy, also make sure to ask about their age, race, religion, familial relationships, and their opinion on Donald Trump
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Jul 9, 2019 03:57
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klosterdev posted:Don't listen to this guy, also make sure to ask about their age, race, religion, familial relationships, and their opinion on Donald Trump Do not forget about sexual orientation and if they hate Jews and why is the answer yes? That ... that i think should do it.
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Jul 9, 2019 05:16
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