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GreenNight posted:I’m in the office 4 days a week and feel like an rear end in a top hat fixed that for you
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Aug 26, 2023 05:38
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I don’t mind it. 150 person office and there are like a dozen of us there. Those 4 days a week the entire 5 man IT team is there and we end up bullshitting for 1-2 hours. I also live less than 2 miles away. I was also paid a premium when hired because I was ok being on site.
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Aug 26, 2023 05:39
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GreenNight posted:I’m in the office 4 days a week and feel like an rear end in a top hat throwing away those k cups. Work-from-home lets me use my high quality coffee maker all day every day as long as I want and not need to worry about other people stealing my coffee/loving up the roast/leaving skunky coffee in the pot overnight.
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Aug 26, 2023 05:45
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GreenNight posted:I don’t mind it. 150 person office and there are like a dozen of us there. Those 4 days a week the entire 5 man IT team is there and we end up bullshitting for 1-2 hours. I also live less than 2 miles away.  the only time I didn't mind coming into work was when I lived a mile away on city streets and I had my own office. One year it snowed in Portland and I could've actually skied to work.  at the recruiters trying to get me to go into an office for a MS Teams job.  what would I be working on in the office, specifically?
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Aug 26, 2023 06:13
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It took me longer to ride the elevators than to walk to my office and I still quit when they started loving around with RTO. I now make over 2x more. And I don't even have to put pants on. No thank you.
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Aug 26, 2023 06:26
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I like being in the office, but I've also got an easy ten minute commute that takes me past all the places I usually shop on the way home, a separate side entrance only for my department, a private office, and 50k SQ ft of warehouse between me and anyone that might want to bother me. It's all situational.
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Aug 26, 2023 06:28
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Vampire Panties posted:
...as in a job just for managing Teams?????? did not realize that was a thing but of course it would be
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Aug 26, 2023 06:38
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I don't think any premium could entice me to go back to the office. Everything is so much less stressful and tiring from home
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Aug 26, 2023 08:06
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My team consists of 8 people spread over 4 locations so we're always collaborating over Meet anyway. Our office policy is basically "come in when you feel like it." Other managers have tried to formalize it into a minimum number of days in the office but nobody keeps track anyway.
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Aug 26, 2023 13:31
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tokin opposition posted:...as in a job just for managing Teams?????? did not realize that was a thing but of course it would be I should clarify and say MS Teams Voice, and its a long-term contract migrating someone away from an ancient Nortel/Avaya environment. They still want someone on site 5 days a week, AND they're looking for candidates to relocate, which is simply  Imaging moving to go into an office in TYOOL 2023
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Aug 26, 2023 13:54
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I started a 100% remote role a few months back, at the senior management level. I've been able to integrate myself with my team well enough, but the tricky part has been trying to influence the other departments. They're often in the habit of asking for stuff via Teams chats, not tickets, etc. I want to put a stop to that, but socially/politically that's very difficult when I'm just some random webcam feed they've seen a couple of times. No incidental conversations in the hallway, etc. I've got a plan around that, it's just going to take longer. I can definitely understand why C-levels prefer the office, and I'm definitely walking a lot less, which concerns me. But it's all about forming new habits.
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Aug 26, 2023 14:25
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can you just ask when someone slacks you, "hey just for records can you also throw this into a ticket?"
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Aug 26, 2023 15:19
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ziasquinn posted:can you just ask when someone slacks you, "hey just for records can you also throw this into a ticket?" "I can be forgetful of details and this may be hard to find later. Could you please put it into a ticket to make sure we don't miss anything?"
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Aug 26, 2023 15:32
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But first, review the process for putting in tickets. There's plenty of platforms that let you put in a ticket by filling out a form, or sending an e-mail, or even teams integration that lets you message a service account. If messaging you on teams is the most efficient and fastest method, they'll keep doing it.
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Aug 26, 2023 15:47
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A lot of our teams have somehow developed a habit where you can't even ask them a question, the response will always be "ticket #?" which also feels like an annoying extreme.
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Aug 26, 2023 15:52
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FISHMANPET posted:A lot of our teams have somehow developed a habit where you can't even ask them a question, the response will always be "ticket #?" which also feels like an annoying extreme. 
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Aug 26, 2023 15:54
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That means their success and future raises are based on how many tickets they complete.
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Aug 26, 2023 16:11
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I can guarantee they're not. These are all requests within our IT-only slack instance, so these aren't requests coming from customers. And they're usually between T3 teams. Put another way, I'm not sure why these teams have Slack channels where people can ask them questions if they're not going to answer any questions. They're also not particularly timely at answering their tickets. It's really a symptom of one of our many larger problems where nobody knows how we're supposed to work together because nobody has decided to define it. Every group is different. Some teams don't even have ticket queues. One team the only way to reach them is to page them in PagerDuty, which can only be done outside of business hours.
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Aug 26, 2023 16:27
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sounds like the dream tbh
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Aug 26, 2023 16:45
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FISHMANPET posted:A lot of our teams have somehow developed a habit where you can't even ask them a question, the response will always be "ticket #?" which also feels like an annoying extreme. It’s like that at my job, especially now that ppl are under the gun for “billable time” we don’t bill to clients. As I always exceed their metrics, I get to find it funny and opt out of that stupidity, but it isn’t
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Aug 26, 2023 16:51
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You have to be careful about being too militant about opening tickets, users can be snotty too and if you're not careful they'll open ten tickets for several small tasks that could easily have been contained in a single ticket. Great if you get awarded for resolve time I guess but that's a lot of clicking in a GUI.
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Aug 26, 2023 19:19
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xzzy posted:You have to be careful about being too militant about opening tickets, users can be snotty too and if you're not careful they'll open ten tickets for several small tasks that could easily have been contained in a single ticket. At my place at least, we get credit for time spent and cases closed, so this is encouraged. I also personally dislike those cases that are 10 different issues at once, not because I don't want to help, but because typically the people who submit them basically have you fixing their entire lives for them lol
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Aug 26, 2023 19:36
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we're a smaller shop so usually ppl will post the ticket when they ask questions but otherwise we'll ask questions and then offer the ticket up for logging time for the helper or they'll ask afterwards and it's all gravy. I'm spoiled I think
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Aug 27, 2023 03:28
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One of the Helpdesk people asked me if I "knew anything about excel" for a ticket they were working on. I knew instantly what this was - a user who needed help with an excel formula, or "how to do something in Excel". I got to have one of my favorite conversations to have, which is the "we build and repair the bridges, roads, and tunnels for our coworkers, but we don't drive the cars and trucks" conversation. Told them to tell the user to ask their manager for some training.
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Aug 27, 2023 03:52
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I understand the desire for ticket metrics, but I have never, ever seen them used for any positive end. It's always "this person or team isn't closing enough tickets," or they aren't closing them fast enough, or whatever. There is no positive reinforcement or recognition when closure rates are good, it's always negative, and the focus on metrics like that always leads to inferior service, as techs are always incentivized to close tickets so they don't get yelled at. I've seen tickets closed with the resolution that they're "going to" do xyz, which is insane and not a resolution at all; the ticket is done when you do the thing, not when you promise you'll do the thing. While I have frequently seen people collecting metrics on the types of tickets closed, I have never once seen them turned into anything actionable. Lots of "hardware fault" resolution types never leads to a reevaluation of hardware purchasing. Lots of "user training issue" resolution types never leads to providing training. The only value I have ever seen anyone get from ticket systems are issue tracking, so problems don't fall through the cracks, and assignment of responsibility for an issue. I understand that people want to have some kind of data so they can make data-driven decisions, but the systems to collect that data are never well-designed, and no one ever makes decisions based on that data. It's always management by vibes, the same dumb methodology that drives other dumb decisions like RTO policies.
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Aug 27, 2023 04:02
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guppy posted:I understand the desire for ticket metrics, but I have never, ever seen them used for any positive end. It's always "this person or team isn't closing enough tickets," or they aren't closing them fast enough, or whatever. There is no positive reinforcement or recognition when closure rates are good, it's always negative, and the focus on metrics like that always leads to inferior service, as techs are always incentivized to close tickets so they don't get yelled at. I've seen tickets closed with the resolution that they're "going to" do xyz, which is insane and not a resolution at all; the ticket is done when you do the thing, not when you promise you'll do the thing.
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Aug 27, 2023 04:15
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FISHMANPET posted:I can guarantee they're not. These are all requests within our IT-only slack instance, so these aren't requests coming from customers. And they're usually between T3 teams. Put another way, I'm not sure why these teams have Slack channels where people can ask them questions if they're not going to answer any questions. They're also not particularly timely at answering their tickets. I mean if it’s conversations between T3 teams, there’s a massive loving problem there. You should be able to ask something like “Hey, whattup — do you remember which application that we ran into an issue with like the one that’s occurring with $application?” or “Hey dude, I’m running into an issue with $thinginyourdepartment — you noticing anything out of the normal?” without getting the smug “ticket” bullshit*. Yeah, of course, if it’s more than a question I’m submitting a ticket, but a ticket for random one-off poo poo? That’s dumb as gently caress and poo poo teams/poo poo management. *major caveat: if it’s a repeat question or lazy bullshit instead of messaging as a courtesy then yeah, demand tickets for everything, but otherwise, work in good faith and expect it in return tehinternet fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Aug 27, 2023 |
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Aug 27, 2023 04:16
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guppy posted:I understand that people want to have some kind of data so they can make data-driven decisions, but the systems to collect that data are never well-designed, and no one ever makes decisions based on that data. It's always management by vibes, the same dumb methodology that drives other dumb decisions like RTO policies. Management is as lazy as the plebs and want a thing that can spit out a bar chart demonstrating how productive everyone is because charts look good in status meetings.
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Aug 27, 2023 04:32
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volunteer to make the charts for them, then just set every variable to be n * rnd(.95-1.20) that updates monthly if the bosses notice then there's no need for ticket tracking if the bosses don't notice start advocating for bonuses
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Aug 27, 2023 05:35
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:One of the Helpdesk people asked me if I "knew anything about excel" for a ticket they were working on. I knew instantly what this was - a user who needed help with an excel formula, or "how to do something in Excel". The two people in my department who are responsible for communication suck as communicating and instead of just responding to any question/ticket that comes in like that, they want me to send an email they drafted to all new hires that literally says “if you don’t know how to do your job, ask your manager. If you can’t do your job, ask IT.” With no further information. I’ve received maybe three “How do I do something in excel” emails all year. It hasn’t been an issue that needs addressing and I’m not sending out an aggressive email to new hires about it.
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Aug 27, 2023 11:40
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Also who cares, if you can find the answer to the query in a few minutes and send a link back to someone’s blog post or whatever then just do that - it’s all happening on company time and it’s probably a more interesting ticket than adding someone to a group or whatever. You’ll want a favour from these people at some point in the future.
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Aug 27, 2023 11:44
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at my last onsite job I had a material quality assurance engineer come to me asking about excel -- she couldn't figure out why the formula wasn't working. I looked at it for 20 seconds and figured it out (which was she was trying to reference the entire merged cell section rather than just the top-left-most), and I was just gobsmacked cause I knew she was making 80k+ over my 40k at the time and couldn't even bother to google something? give me her job I can do it.
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Aug 27, 2023 14:13
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Thanks Ants posted:Also who cares, if you can find the answer to the query in a few minutes and send a link back to someone’s blog post or whatever then just do that - it’s all happening on company time and it’s probably a more interesting ticket than adding someone to a group or whatever. You’ll want a favour from these people at some point in the future. Now you’re the excel guy.
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Aug 27, 2023 15:14
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GreenNight posted:Now you’re the excel guy. Alternatively, you’re the guy who people know and gets promoted beyond where you otherwise would. It’s super org dependent, but this poo poo is all on a sliding scale — if the org abuses your good will once you’ve set boundaries, then it’s not an org you want to work for. Though you could 100% end up being the Excel guy, in which case 
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Aug 27, 2023 15:58
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this just reminds me when I was told that I would get a little bump or raise if I cross-trained into the tech center at Staples (this was like in college) and once they said "lol jk" I was like do not schedule me for tech center work then.
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Aug 27, 2023 16:43
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I don’t mind helping somebody out with issues like “my outlook view changed how do I get it back” by googling resolutions and telling them but I also have no issue responding to “how do I do something in salesforce” with “ask your manager/coworkers” because I’ve never used salesforce before and I don’t have an account to log in with anyways. For some reason the two people on my team who don’t even work tickets do have an issue with it though (despite one of them constantly asking me how to fix said easy problems they could Google themself more than any other person in the organization).
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Aug 27, 2023 17:08
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My willingness to help figure out "how do I do X in Y application" largely depends on the user. If I have a good rapport with them, and they asked nicely, and it seems like they're putting in a good-faith effort to solve it themselves, I'll see what I can do. But generally I refer them to their managers/senior coworkers. Unless of course it's a VIP  In fairness though, I don't think I've ever had a bad experience giving a VIP special treatment. They're almost always thankful and never demanding or entitled. The pressure to give them special treatment comes from within my own department
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Aug 27, 2023 17:15
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We have what we call a Genius Bar in Teams that folks pose questions to and everyone in the company has it by default, so someone will pose an excel question and typically someone knows the answer, not IT. It works really well.
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Aug 27, 2023 17:21
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GreenNight posted:We have what we call a Genius Bar in Teams that folks pose questions to and everyone in the company has it by default, so someone will pose an excel question and typically someone knows the answer, not IT. It works really well. That seems like a really good idea, honestly. How big is your org and how did it get started if you don’t mind my asking?
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Aug 27, 2023 18:27
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I will explicitly not walk some of my coworkers through "how do I admin Microsoft" by giving them a KB with the hope that maybe someday they'll actually do their own research. "MS changes so much that they have the relevant documentation" never really happens
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