‘IT manager’ needed tech support because they had never heard of a command line The very premise on which The Register is built is that our readers know quite a lot about information technology, and that stories featured each Friday in On Call – our weekly tales of your support experiences – therefore reflect your working lives. We mention the above because this week's On Call, sent by a reader we'll …
My first job was working for a (non-secret) government establishment. My boss had been there for years and knew his stuff IT wise but at the level above the management were rotated every three years and the incoming one could be from a different establishment and unrelated department. I'd actually prefer it if they don't know about IT provided they listen to those who do, the most dangerous managers are the ones who think they know but don't!
In the end I only met the boss's boss once, at my annual review, where he basically told me I was doing an excellent job, should be promoted to the next grade up as that's the level I was working at, but he couldn't recommend me as I hadn't been there long enough and it would be turned down automatically. I found another role shortly after.
Ah that's very government. Your doing a great job and you should be paid more but the rules say we cant (and thay usually do, but will be bent when it suits).
Happened to me, then after nearly 20yr I put in my resignation. They said they could 'maybe' get me another 2-5k to stay, I was being offed 30k more at that time. I did not stay.
Similar experience. Offered the long withheld promotion with none of the usual formalities. If the previous director had been in place I might have tried my hand at negotiating for it to have been back-dated a couple of years without actually withdrawing my notice. It would have increased my eventual pension by 10%.
When I worked for the US Civil Service, I had the opposite experience.
My boss (and his boss) jumped through all sorts of hoops to get me a grade increase even though, on paper, I was not "qualified."
I look back on those years with a great deal of fondness as I was able to define my own tasks and was given interesting work and a great deal of support even though, in my own estimation, I was no wunderkind or particularly gifted performer.
The pay was awful (it is Civil Service, after all1) but it was a great place to work.
________________
1 Look the pay scales for anything under a GS-13 and prepare to be horrified.
> I'd actually prefer it if they don't know about IT provided they listen to those who do
I hear that. While good techies and good managers are certainly not mutually exclusive having both skills isn't massively common. And taking a good tech and using their time on people leadership isn't often ideal.
The structure that pay is tied to seniority is the issue in my opinion. A good people leader earning less than their best reports shouldn't be unusual, and would mean people continue to do what they love or are most productive at.
Instead to get pay bump a lot of people are forced into leadership roles which makes them and their reports and the whole workplace suffer.
That is very true and the public sector is very very bad at valuing skills over managment volume. The more people you manager the more you are paid.
You might be a renowned world expert in a specific life and death critical system and who is in huge demand from the likes of Google or Microsoft who offer massive incentivised packages to recruit, and you might be nearly impossible to replace but your public sector employer will have you down as "Technical grade 2" with no chance of getting to grade 1 because you don't have a team to manage.
They know they have been promoted above their abilities so to hide their insecurity about their shortcomings they are super aggressive about immediately placing blame on others as a deflection.
Kind of surprised he was able to get her to admit she didn't know what she was doing and start listening. Sounds like there may have been some hope for her.
I think I've seen these people at work. I worked for a company for ten years and during that time they had at least two "directors" who had nobody reporting to them. They got invited to meetings -- and sometimes even showed up -- but I never saw or heard of any these types contribute to the work that the rest of the IT department was engaged in. When the company started shedding their older employees (I was among those even though there was no one else on the staff that had my background) they were *still* there as a directors -- directing no one.
"It's called the Peter Principle."
That book was formative for me, though I never read it. My dad, who was in management, had a copy when I was in my early teens[1] and explained the gist: that in any hierarchy, each person tends to be promoted until they reach their level of incompetence, and then remain there.
Great at one's job? Get promoted. Good at the new role and increased responsibilities? Get promoted again. According to Peter, the cycle continues until one finds oneself in a role one *isn't* good at, at which point the promotions cease. QED.
The book was intended as satire.-- especially when you consider the obvious corollary, that every organization is full of people incompetent in their current roles, at all levels --but it looks as though it has come to be taken at least somewhat seriously.
Back to the story. Like every arrogant little shit, i.e. pretty much every teenager, I swore that wasn't going to happen to *me*.
Fast forward a couple of decades. I was in my first supervisory position -- head computer guy in a department of two. That kind of worked. But then I got a second underling -- and realized I'd reached my level of incompetence after all. Because, to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke[2], the easiest way to discover where your personal upper limit is, is by crossing it.
I actually asked for a demotion. I hemmed and hawed, worried about the loss of income, but finally decided it was the right thing to do, for the company and for my self-respect. Might well have quoted the Peter Principle in the meeting.
My request was granted. Astoundingly, my pay wasn't even cut, so it worked out well for everyone.
I've scrupulously avoided anything remotely management-like ever since.
[1] A particularly impressionable age, when one first starts thinking about adult issues -- or at least, that's how it was for me.
[2] To wit, his second law: "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
When I was working for a large electrical manufacturing company, I was asked to write the Instruction Manual for the product we were developing. Later, I wrote IBs for several other products, and slowly became completely integrated into Technical Manuals Department. On re-structuration of the company, the Chief Engineer of that department decided to retire, and I was asked to take over his position. As it was a Grade 6 position, that meant that I would be on call 24/7 and would not be eligible to earn extra by working overtime. I renegotiated the position to be a Grade 5, Principal Engineer, but with the same salary, plus overtime if I wanted, and only 9 - 5 so I could forget about work in the evenings and weekends. I stayed in that position until the whole department was made redundant and our work was downloaded onto the Sales Department (who made a complete hash of it!)
> I've scrupulously avoided anything remotely management-like ever since.
When I retired I was one of a handful of people still on a Technical Grade (albeit the highest one) whilst everyone else was management grade ....I made dammed sure not to get "promoted" as I was better off at the grade I was on
You're right... not typical but also not that rare - must be since I have experienced it too. This one was an example of my worst nightmare - bean counter turned IT manager (regional, even!)... she was on record saying that she didn't even know how she had ended up in IT. However, she was astoundingly humble - unlike her best friend who had started as a cable puller and had forgotten everything she had ever learned. She always asked for expert input and actually listened to explanations at meetings, and listened to instructions when she (inevitably) ucked fup her computer. The only bean counter I have ever managed to get along well with.
"Achieving managerial status does not, however, require newly minted leaders to know what their minions do at work."
Sadly this is the case in many organisations, not limited to government though it is rampant in the UKs civil service where you can move horizontally and vertically into roles where you have zero knowledge or expertise because the attitude is that anyone can manage any team if they've had the requisite management training.
Couldn’t agree more. One of the best managers I ever worked for knew next to nothing on the “technical” side of his department - but knew the organisation’s hierarchy, having progressed through the ranks (and probably knew where a few bodies were stashed). His philosophy was to hire people who knew their job well and then guard their backs whilst they did what was needed. He never backed away from a fight if any of us had trodden on toes - he resolutely stood between us and any flak (though he wouldn’t then shy away from handing out a bo**ocking, in private, if it was warranted afterwards).
My experience from 30-odd years in the networking field is that the best managers know just about enough about the tech side to know when someone is trying to bullsh*t them but also don't have the desire to dig into the details of every situation and instead leave that to their specialists. And conversely, to shield said specialists from bullsh*t coming from other directions. I am fortunate enough to have such a manager now.
Yup, the manager you want is one who sees the fact that you know more than they do on a topic as an asset and a blessing, rather than a challenge to their ego.
If they can (and are willing to) learn a little whilst they are facilitating you getting on with things, so much the better.
I'm fortunate as well in having exactly that above me in the company tree (doubly so as he has exactly the same viewpoint on the subject as I do).
Unlike some of my colleagues, who work for (and endure) emperors of their own jealously guarded domains...
There was a major technical issue that required working over a weekend.
The department manager knew virtually nothing about what we needed to do, but he still came in to keep us supplied with tea, coffee, sandwiches and words of encouragement.
Unfortunately, he left shortly after as his management style didn't align with that of the rest of the company (which is also why I left).
It's a toss-up which is worse, the manager who cheerfully admits they know nothing, ot the manager who claims knowledge because they can connect their iPhone to any other iThing, though not of course to a Windows box. Add in a bit of SQL, a dash of excel macros, a soupcon of Cloud for Leaders, and you have a moron micro-managing you and keeping you away from meetings you really should be at...
I've been fortunate in working for/with bosses who understand what is good for the business. They weren't necessarily familiar with the technical details but comprehended the business need.
I had a project/suggestion for a process improvement to our product and convinced the boss(es) to make provision for about £250k mostly in bought-in equipment. Because of the nature of the updating, several suppliers wanted to get in on the development and slashed their prices in order to get involved. Overall, we spent about £75k in equipment.
Some of the residual was shared around --->
director> We are looking for a new IT lead in this organisation. I heard no complaints about you, which is good. Do you know anything about Python?
pm> Yes, my brother actually has one. He also has a Gecko and a cat.
director> Splendid! The role begins in two months' time. Happy to transfer?
pm> Yes!
A good technical manager needs to have *some* idea of what his department does. Of course, she also needs to leverage the experience and knowledge of those who work for her. Otherwise, how could he allocate his resources appropriately or give reliable estimates for schedules?
There's organisations (in the private sector, multinationals) where manglers become such so that they stop breaking stuff at customer sites.
It's self preservation from the organisation to do it that way...
Once upon a time at a $TELCO equipment builder they had two promotion tracks... One for Manglement and one for Experts/Engineers.
Strangely only the manglement one progressed beyond a certain point.
I implemented a four hour minimum for on-site visits in (roughly) 1990, a couple years after I went solo. Double on weekends/holidays. A few clients balked at the new rates ... I simply told 'em "Don't call me unless you actually need me". Or, as I tell prospective new clients, "It's my job to ensure we see as little of each other as possible". For the most part this has worked well over the decades.
However, a new issue arose. Convincing 'em to pay 4 hours for a one minute visit. The old TV repairman's maxim applied, "I'm not charging you for thumping your telly with a screwdriver. I'm charging you for knowing where and how hard to thump your telly, and for showing up to do it". The explanation seems to have worked ... although about eight years ago, the child CEO of a start-up wondered why I'd need to thump a telly.
That child CEO is now the 30ish year old CTO for a Silly Con Valley company you've heard of.
IT is many things, but it's rarely boring. "May you live in interesting times" may not be an actual old Chinese curse, but it's applicable anyway.
> interesting times quote originated in the counterweight continent.
It probably wasn't ever really a Chinese curse, but, um, *really* hoping you aren't suggesting that Pterry created the phrase - aside from anything else, if it wasn't already well known in English then we'd not recognise why he'd titled the book that way when seeing it on the Waterstones bookshelf!
An important and long time client bought a competitor and asked us to take over their IT, around the same time I joined the company.
The company they were "merging with" had someone who considered themselves the most important person in the world. She treated everyone from the client's head office team like crap, treated us even worse.
Unfortunately, she did nothing technically abusive in a way we could complain about. "My email is broken and needs fixing now. No, I am too important to stop using my laptop for 10 minutes while you fix it. Obviously using my iPad for this next call is not convenient, because it's on the other side of the room at the moment. Why isn't the laptop I still won't let you access fixed yet?". With every sentence having a tone/subtext of "you aren't even competent enough to be a millionaire" in a way that is quite frankly impossible to describe.
My boss said the client was too significant to jeopardise over one very influential user being difficult to deal with, so be nice to her.
I was new to the job, having been out of work for several years with trauma and anxiety issues. Every single user apart from her was a pleasure to deal with, and a massive confidence boost for me.
The first call that involved being on the phone with her for more than a couple of minutes, at the end of the (45 minutes?) call I literally went outside and vomited.
I was given permission to hand any future support tickets that came from her to someone else.
Then the other person on the help desk made the same request. They weren't allowed to refuse the tickets because someone had to do them, but they were given permission to escalate anything non-trivial without the normal level of investigation being required first.
The help desk manager then needed to be officially told that they were only allowed to escalate such tickets to the Managing Director after at least one call attempting to resolve the issue first.
To be honest, the managing director put up with it a lot longer than I expected him to.
Shortly after the managing director went to the client HQ in person for the purpose of giving some IT training at their annual corporate conference, her support tickets stopped needing the "super special important person who needs to be escalated to someone more senior" treatment. She started using the word "thank" followed by the word "you" at the end of calls/emails and weird stuff like that!
My assumption was that there was almost certainly a discussion with the client's board of directors which involved an offer to assist them with their migration to an alternate IT supplier.
Moral of the story: When the owner of the company knows that literally every single one of his employees would rather resign than be forced to deal with a specific user, they kind of have no choice but to deal with the problem.
It was a great job overall, we specifically only took clients who understood that a broken laptop meant paying an employee to twiddle their thumbs instead of being productive.
This also meant if a user had an IT issue that wasn't being resolved promptly enough, they were encouraged to escalate through management on their side so they could ensure we were doing our job properly. They would then have the appropriate person call our MD to ask what was going on/get things appropriately prioritised.
We had one user who thought that telling people your laptop has issues was a magic get out of jail free card for poor performance. They found out what a ticket system is the second time this "thing they keep telling everyone" got flagged for us to investigate through this "it goes all the way to the top on both sides" method of escalation.
Clarification: They didn't get a technical explanation of what a ticket system is and how it works or anything. They found out that there is something called a ticket system, and that it contains evidence that can be used in disciplinary proceedings against someone who isn't smart enough to create a paper trail that matches the excuses they are saying to all of their colleagues. :)
Did short stint at an international haulage company.
My IT boss didn't know much about anything it seemed, but she did have an HGV license.
Her surname was Bubb, so we all called her Bielza, but occasionally (when someone was being really stressed by her) also to her face.
Anon for obvious reasons
Sorry, but after 25+ years I've learned:
A manager should be able to do the jobs of those immediately below them.
A manager should be able to do parts of the jobs of those immediately above them.
They shouldn't BE doing those jobs, except in extremis, and they don't necessarily have to do everything perfectly or the same, but they should be ABLE to cope with that and understand that role.
Anything else is a nonsense that ends in disaster.
You fail to read. I cite: "do the jobs of those immediately below them". A CEO's job is, by that description, NOT "everbody's job". If a company is so small that the CEO could, then he is not a CEO but rather owner. The variant that a CEO can do those jobs does exist, I name Gabe Newell as one of those examples. And I guess he isn't that deep into programming/art/etc as he was, but at the level of design decisions, like "I want to leave a mark on the wall when I shoot it", "When I draw a weapon the environment has to act upon this". The latter, for a newer example, is well done in Cyberpunk 2077, and practically not done in Starfield. (Surprisingly older Bethesda games do act upon drawing a weapon)
I fully realised that logic and still downvoted.
Why? Because "CEO-1"'s job doesn't include the work of "CEO-2", just that they should be able to pick up the slack if needed.
That means that "CEO" should be able to do the work of "CEO-1" but has no need to have any clue about how to do "CEO-2"s work.
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"Wrong! By your logic, the CEO should be able to do everybody’s job, which is clearly nonsense"
Wrong! He said, and I quote, since you clearly didn't read it first time around;
"A manager should be able to do the jobs of those immediately below them".
My bolding, to help with comprehension.
Agree ... BUT such souls are quite rare !!!
There are MANY who think they are THIS ... BUT ... reality shows them up when they try to prove it !!!
(Usually when the 'Computer Room' is on fire and the New CEO is coming for a visit !!!)
Have worked with a few, who made the job so much easier ... deflecting much of the flak from 'on high' while you got on with the job.
:)
They don't need to.
They just need to do whatever is critical that you do day-to-day to manage in your absence, or find a way to make that happen (e.g. hire a replacement that they are able to evaluate as being suitable).
Also, for those above you, you only need to be able to do PARTS of their job.
There's an analog to managers that I can relate to: I "manage" some tasks in my life by hiring others to do them for me. I am fully capable of replacing brakes or changing the oil in my car--sometimes I even do it. But I usually pay someone else to do it over lunch so that I can use my time for something else, which is how I buy back my Saturdays.
Having a small amount handiness with my car gives me the knowledge to know what jobs really are above my ken and best left to professionals. And I like to think a little knowledge allows me to judge if the professional knows what he's talking about or trying to shine me on.
It's not much different for managing business tasks. As I've told management here a few times: there is a reason I went to engineering school and not people school. I will manage/supervise if you want me to, but please don't expect me to be as competent at the task as I try to be at the technical side I've been practicing at for 30 years.
A manager should be able to do the jobs of those immediately below them.
I disagree with this, particularly in a fast paced evolving technology setting.
A good mananger should have an understanding of the jobs of those they manage, and if they have been in their role for a while they should have built a familiarity of those jobs so that they can better support and guide their team. If they have come to their management role though promotion through the ranks they may well have expertise in some, many, or all of these jobs - but that is not their role now; they have new skills they need to develop and hone.
The military have a process for developing new officers, they are supported by an experienced NCO. Technically they outrank their NCO, but it would be a very foolish junior officer that casually disregarded a suggestion from their NCO, or the words "Do you think that is wise, sir".
In a fast paced and evolving technology setting a good manager should be able to identify where there are gaps in their team's skills and may need to bring in those skills from outside the team. They are not going to be able to do that job, and they would not typically be the best choice to become the team's expert. They only need to learn enough to know how the new technology impacts on the overall work of the team and to be able to manage that work. If they have come up from a relevant technical role they may well maintain additional expertise in particular roles, but their job now is to manage the whole team so they need to work with their senior team leaders who should be the SMEs.
Back in the 90s I worked in academic IT at a college. As was the habit of the time IT, the Library and Media Services were lumped together and because the most senior manager in all of those was a librarian then she was given the role of managing all the services. She was lovely, but not technical in any way.
Generally speaking we were left to our own devices which was OK, but it did also feel directionless. We were quite interested to find out that the university we were a part of had decided to standardise on networking platforms. And we were told that it was either (Novell) NetWare or (Windows) NT and she couldn't quite remember, and were they the same thing or different?
I don't think I ever did find out. We just continued with NetWare.Incidentally, that was one of the things that drove me into the private sector where I first encountered Windows NT 4.0 which was primitive compared to NetWare..
this tax office never hired managers from outside the organization.
Well thats good! when I first got my first I.T. job I thought , wrongly , that I would learn progress and climb the ladder .
Especially as the employer had an "Investors in people" badge, sadly every time an opening came up they would bring in a new uni kid.
Amazing how this company in the story managed to combine "hire internal only" with "do not need to know the department's subject matter"
Considering the incredibly obsolete systems that particular tax outfit depends on, it's probably just as well they don't try to recruit managers from outside.... they'd probably be liable for injuries incurred by interviewees tripping on the first step in their terrified rush out the door.
I worked for the civil service for several years in the 1990s and yep, most IT managers back then were simply the useless wannabe managers but were too useless to be given any proper management positions, so they gave them IT manager roles as IT was a black-art only understood by the contract hires like me.
One, the manager would go into meetings and invariably say "I don't know, I'll ask GGGGGG". Eventually the other mangers said to bring GGGGGG to the meetings
Nice guys, but made me aware of where he came from was It illiterate. That was shown when I went into that industry and saw how bad it was !
The other was at a large retail op. The manager there was not a real IT person, but knew his team, had us all in the right places and if we asked or said something he went with it and made purchases, arguments or suggestions. Did so because we all trusted each other and he knew we would not take the piss. He was a great buffer between us and the real twats above.
Others are the cringe worthy fail updwards into positions they should not be in
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> "@echo off" is the giveaway ....going back to DOS 5...
Inconclusive that this is a Windows user. Even _I_ know echo predates DOS5.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_(command)#History"
...available in many operating system and shells .... echo began within Multics ... became part of Version 2 Unix .... On MS-DOS ... versions 2 and later.
And you ignore the @ sign too? Print.com came with DOS 2, but using the @ sign in front of "Echo off" to disable the echo in a .BAT file without still echo-ing that "echo off" came, AFAIK, with DOS 5, maybe with DOS 6, but I think it was DOS 5 (cannot test for that right now :D).
"Has your IT manager lacked IT skills?"
Not really, but I had one that was much better at handling non-technical users and politics than the rest of our department.
Walking into the office, I would sometimes warn him to "Put on the red shoes.", or congratulate with "You really had the red shoes on today."
He did not care for the IT Crowd reference.
IBM PM who was better as a actual architect than a PM....
Letting his number 2 do everything in a Access DB, instead of us working from the Excel master file, resulting in our team Calgary & Team 2 Edmonton, duplicating the number of PC's shipped to site!
Tasked to perform a inventory by the PM, number 2 wanted it all logged into his Access DB, which while pretty was ungainly, & so me & the other guy scanned in with my handy barcode scanner all the serial model numbers.
Next morning number 2 complained we didn't use his DB, I countered it was faster with my method & such a Access DB guy like himself should be able to work out a import method PDQ, then the PM also looking at the Excel file complained after two hours about the barcode scanner use as he was manually editing out the model information prefixed to the serial number string.
I asked him why he hadn't done a Search & Replace & got a blank look in reply, followed by a open jaw (& Icon) as I demonstrated in seconds how to tidy up the rest of the file.
I worked at a real time control company, melding DCS systems, PLCs, Vaxes, etc etc. The boss was a very sharp cookie. The rule became "The job's not finished until [regonymised as Seamus] says it's finished."
Typical scenario: "Ok, Seamus, the FAT test is under way, would you like to see how it's going?" and within usually about 30 seconds of hi arriving at a console (I don't exaggerate), Seamus would do something to break the system. Uncanny knowledge of where the vulns might be.
I spent nearly 9 years working for a UK government associated institution with lots of IT stuff going on.
My main function was to keep anything Email related secure and running and regularly had meetings with the technical owners of other systems (and these were supposed to be technical experts...) I remember one meeting with someone who was supposed to be the expert on the system who had no idea what an IP address was and having to talk them through firing up a cmd prompt and running Ipconfig /all to help us diagnose the issues.
We also had an email engineer working on the team where I joined who had worked for a major UK bank for over 5 years running their email who had no idea how to read an SMTP header. Suffice to say, she ended up lasting 18 months after I joined when it turned out she was just incapable of learning anything beyond step by step guides for system admins.
I think it's a modern workforce issue though, having been working now for nearly 30 years I come from a generation who grew up in an era where everything was not handed to you on a plate and a broad knowledge of multiply technologies was needed to get things working and younger generations just expect things to work out of the box seamlessly.
I do actually agree that managers need training in their role. But the mantra;
that managers manage people and do not need to know the department's subject matter,
is one I've come up against many times.
Always from people who hadn't a clue who was dong the job right and who wasn't. Or what could be improved. Or what needed to change.In other words- anything that could legitimately be called "managing". Pretty much universally they believed in metrics. The result was departments that did a lot of stuff. Staffed by people who worked hard at being busy, And anyone who could actually do the job properly would clear off as soon as they could escape.
Something similar happened to me last year. New manager brought in. She had no idea what she was doing but, hey, she knew words like 'Kubernetes'.
Completely ignored what the existing manager (my boss) told her, completely ignored what the business unit managers were telling her, what the needs of the business were etc. and decided to get rid of the entire development team (me) as, you know, any bespoke software developed in house can be replaced with something off-the-shelf. She was so much of an expert that she didn't even bother asking for handover documents (so didn't write any), any information handover (so didn't do any), or even what the various systems did, and I was out of the door within a matter of weeks.
A year on and they're still using all of the in-house stuff, nobody has managed to find any of these mythical off-the-shelf replacements, users are screaming for support and upgrades (and getting neither), firm is losing a fortune and she is still, apparently, hiring delivery managers (God knows what they're delivering), blaming anyone and everyone and, basically, still as clueless about IT as she was when she started.
I'm not exactly losing sleep over it
"hiring delivery managers (God knows what they're delivering"
I was sent on one of those intelligence insulting courses attended by various victims from different parts of a large telecoms company. Our local director was one of the big bods running the show and one of the ways he distinguished himself was by demonstrating he knew nothing about the Iron Triangle - couldn't see why you couldn't have all three.
Anyway, typical introduce yourself start. I went first and explained what my job was. Succeeding victims said progressively less untill it came to a complete wanker who simply announced loudly "I deliver". I don't know how I resisted an audible murmor of "Oh, a van driver.".
Both were unprofessional.
- The manager - for trash-talking Jack. She's otherwise not supposed to know a terminal from Minesweeper as long as her Excel sheet balances up at the end of the day and Jack is getting rewarded for his knowledge and work, and for his division to be functional and progressing. And it's not Jack's job to know or opine on what she should or not know.
- Jack - Way worse. For wasting time backtalking and playing who's right and who's wrong (if the conversation went the way he claims it went, which I highly doubt), and for altogether putting himself and worse - his team - at risk.
Mocking the technical level of a user - no matter how pebcak-y they are - should be a no-no at a personal level, no matter what comes from the other side. There are a gazillion ways of conveying a user's idiocy - in polite leading questions, in ticket resolution comments, in email chains - you name it. It could be escalated to a rep later, it could be addressed in a formal complaint - anything goes.
Confronting the user directly is a waste of time. All you need is de-escalate and get to the point so the job gets done. It's your time, not theirs. If they are abusive - you just cut the conversation short. Inform them that they are abusing you, and that if they want your assistance they'll have to stop and listen.
Telling them what they should know and not know is personal nitpicking and worse - can go wrong at so many levels, sky is the limit. Jack could have f#cked it up for his whole team, not only for himself, should the manager have decided to dig into it.
I'll give Jack the benefit of the doubt of this having actually happened the way he says it did, as it was Europe and all, and un-fireable helpdesk will act in an un-fireable way. But in no scenario would I be proud of this.
All that this episode proves was that Jack had the time to be unprofessional, and had zero people skills, as said manager likely developed a healthy dislike towards whoever she associated with Jack and with the whole episode, dislike which could have blown off years down the line on someone completely unrelated to the whole episode.
Nothing was won there, the user was not educated, the user won't stop yelling the next time she has an issue, and she will not go and learn command line in a crying atonement.
Counterpoint: the person with greater power has greater responsibility to be professional. A manager calling in to abuse an underling for something which is not his fault is more unprofessional, in my opinion, than the underling who snarks back. Conversely, the underling is at greater risk so it would be professionally beneficial to rein that attitude in.
As someone who used to work phone technical support, I can relate to Jack's experience. I had a manager call in for support (the exact issue is lost in the mists of time), for some reason didn't like my attitude, and said he would be speaking with my manager. My response was that I would be happy to escalate the request (I was certainly a little snotty about it). There was a lengthy pause, and then the caller said, "Well, aren't you going to solve my problem?" I proceeded to solve his problem, and then walked over to my manager and let him know that he would be receiving an irate call from a satisfied customer.
Phone support work is hard, taking calls all day from people who are often frustrated, sometimes clueless, sometimes embarrassed, and frequently stressed out, and therefore frequently lacking in social graces and willing to take out their frustrations on the hapless help desk agents. The support agent is expected to be unfailingly polite and at the same time sufficiently technical and resourceful to solve a variety of unpredictable problems. That's why the BOFH refers to the work as Hell Desk, and it's the cause of a great deal of burnout.
The "I manage people, not content" line stems from the immediate post-WW II dictum, supposedly originating at Harvard Business School, that a good manager could manage anything: the students needed to learn how to manage, not any of the semi-infinite types of business they's all go on to manage in their careers.
Evidently, Steve Jobs Mark I bought into that philosophy when he recruited John Sculley, who'd spent the previous 17 years of his life selling (in Jobs's own words) sugared water and buying advertising prices ~ a factor of ten higher than his competitors'. It was never clear that Sculley understood the personal computer business, nor Apple's niche in it. Differences of opinion with SJ M I led to Jobs's departure and the founding of NeXT.
Apple's board ditched Sculley and hired Michael Spindler, who had excellent credentials (DEC, Intel, President of Apple Europe) but figured that the only way to reign in losses was to fire as many people as possible, and then try to sell the company (to IBM, Sun, or Philips). He lasted less than three years before the Apple board canned him.
Then came Gil Amelio, a guy who knew computer hardware from the ground up (Bell Labs, Fairchild, Rockwell, National Semiconductor) as well as having a Ph.D. in physics. You know, a smart guy. Yet he spent months trying to lowball the price of BeOS, failed, and then contributed his one historical decision: buying NeXT for twice what he'd tried to offer Be. In less than 18 months after starting as Apple CEO, Amelio was out on his ear, thank to Jobs's lobbying the board. The rest, as they say, is history — but remember that beyond soldering, Jobs's hardware experience was extremely limited, and it was his partnership with Wozniak that jump-started the company and the industry. Jobs should be respected for interesting himself in the hardware just enough to allow him to pursue one product vision after another. Those may be visions that most people reading this site mock, but that punters literally lined up in mall hallways and on city streets to turn over their hard-earned <insert currency name here> to buy. Jobs never knew everything about the technologies that went into his "magical" devices, but he was intellectually curious enough to learn what he needed to know about them to make superior (as measured by sales) products. and let's face it, in the business world, it's only the bottom line that matters.
"supposedly originating at Harvard Business School, that a good manager could manage anything: the students needed to learn how to manage"
The first words spoken to any new students on a management course should be "Respect can only be earned." It wouldn't be a bad idea to repeat them at the end of the course. In reality I suppose it's an unknown fact to those running the courses.
In my current gig, I’ve witnessed:
- a Windows sysadmin who is responding to all change requests with the lie that the request is impossible until we begin a 365 migration, so he does nothing
- his (Core Infrastructure) Team Lead, who complained that Outlook wasn’t working: he kept opening the 365 version which isn’t compatible with the on-site Exchange server his team manages
- same guy announced on a public channel that the spam filter “seems to block too many messages” and that the complaining user should “not send so many at once”
- same guy also worked from home through an entire Internet outage which lasted two and a half days before someone rebooted the router (yes really), and in the meantime he insisted there was no issue with the connection
- oh, he also sent his entire team a spreadsheet detailing their contracts, including salaries, ran from desk to desk making sure they deleted the email, then went back to his desk and sent it again
- this guy has not yet been fired by his boss, the new Division Head, who spent four weeks telling everyone that we had no policies and no documentation, until someone finally lost patience and showed him where the policies and documentation are
- same DH waited until all but one of the Core Infrastructure team’s network unit had quit, then announced we’d fast track a bandwidth upgrade across our 15+ building site
- and employed three people he knew previously
- and handed the contract for external assistance with the bandwidth upgrade to a company he has an existing, very friendly, relationship with, rather than the providers we have a relationship with
- we are publicly funded, by the way
- both of these “leaders” are very active on linkedin, where they’ve spent the last couple of months celebrating their achievements, which in the real world are primarily driving away all of their most skilled employees
- everything’s great here, really - pure job satisfaction
As a former IT manager I totally understand, for most of the job interviews I do they don't prioritize hard skills and most of the time I'm being passed up for candidates who could speak like AI and focuses on project management I have no idea what they're doing in terms of IT. This is what happens when HR and recruiters hire the wrong people because they don't understand what the job entails.
There are many IT domains where I cheerfully admit to knowing enough to be dangerous and others where I literally wrote the book. In either case I would never in a million years get aggressive or worry about my ego when talking with someone about a topic. In the cases where I can see clear as day the person is walking straight into a problem I will always phrase my questions as "have you thought about?" or "what happens if this..?" in other scenarios I always proceed from the basis I might not know enough in which case I try to question from a perspective of can you tell me how you arrived at that conclusion and more often than not they had more information than me and were dead right. In other scenarios I ask "I don't understand this, here's how I thought it worked/operated/behaved, what am I missing?"
Sometimes, as a more experienced person further up the food chain, you may have someone presenting to you a factually and technically accurate solution but then you have spend the time explaining the realities of budgets/on-going support/realpolitik etc. to them so that A) they understand you are not shi**ing on their idea and B) you like their proposal, it's a good body of work and here are some ways we could tweak it to make it over the line.
Trust runs both ways, I trust you to be competent, you trust me to be your advocate, mentor and competent in my broader but less hands-on domain. (probably less competent today than I was 20 years ago because to be frank my hands on knowledge is obsolete. But my hands on office politics is better than ever)
TLDR my job is to make your job easier, not harder.
Oh and never ever take credit for a persons ideas or work, always point them out or reference them in meetings and I have lost count of the times I finish a presentation or meeting with "this wasn't my idea, Bob deserves the credit for figuring this out, I'm just here to present it and tell you I support it."
The tip off was that she came from telephony. I've managed telephony (and a whole lot more) for 32 years. Every single female that I inherited when moved over a telephony team knew next to nothing about hands on technical details. They all came from carrier backgrounds and were focused on "relationships."
I eliminated every one of them. Some moving to other roles and responsibilities, some moving on to other employers.
My back fill employees were always close to 50/50 between genders, with many of the females coming from roles like desktop support, who we cross-trained in telephony. Every single one of them knew CLI in both MSFT DOS/Windows and/or HPUX, Solaris or BSD.
A couple of them are still working and are seller in telephony.
I had an IT manager years ago who ran a Token Ring network - some 800 workstations, and we were constantly running around the building finding places where people has kicked connectors out of walls.
This was when 100Mb Ethernet was common. Beaconing Token Rings was my introduction to the 'robust' technology.
Having come from a significant number of other organisations who merrily used Ethernet everywhere, I innocently asked, "Why don't we use Ethernet?" To which the answer provided was "Because it has collisions".
This was a common question for 6 or so months, until I decided to try another track - "I have heard that - but evidently it doesn't degrade service" - Why don't we put 48 workstations onto Ethernet for a while, and see how they do as far as performance goes.... Success - We deployed the workstation ethernet cards, replaced a couple of cards in our Cabletron chassis and installed a bridge, and after 6 months there were zero issues - Finally, we removed Token Ring from the whole organsation - Except the IBM mainframe - where when the latest upgraded mainframe CPU came in a few years later, I won a bet that 'of course it has a Token Ring MAU'... Free lunch.....
I discovered later that the manager had come from purchasing...
I once ended up in deep trouble because the Chief Security Officer for my organisation had absolutely no idea what "mapping a network drive from his (Windows XP) computer to mine" meant.
Apparently the only person who could have put a file on my PC's hard drive was the person sat at the keyboard... even though we were trying to persuade the client site I worked at that they didn't really need support people onsite as it could all be managed from Maidstone or Aldershot...
I hope things improved when the Complete S***show Collapsed but given the way they previously kept on the incompetents and let the good staff go (I'm not including myself in that list, btw), I suspect the latest incarnation is no better.
I don't think it could really be any worse, but I'm not putting money on it.
Twenty six years ago just arrived from South Africa and took a "temp" job at a well known ISP (Still there today.) Call centre dial up support of residential customers. A nice bloke had called in a few times for help and it was always great helping him. One day he calls in and says "I've got a consultant helping me set up my network at home, could you speak to him?" He has the phone over and a fellow South African voice says without greeting "I am an MCSE do you know what that means?" I didn't even bother to reply just asked him what he needed. He was having troubles connecting to the internet. I asked him to do a traceroute for me to the bbc. He didn't reply so i asked him again. Eventually he answered "How do i do a traceroute?"
In my own eyes I failed the interview. Not being able to answer too many technical questions. But I was hired anyway. (Lost my previous job to downsizing and was desperate)
I was called a couple of days later and asked to start a month early, as my manager was off sick and they had no IT Support.
Turns out he was off due to his 3rd or 4th breakdown which he told me when he came back.
Before that though I was answering to the head of department, who had much more basic IT knowledge than me, but had been the one interviewing. Turns out also he wasn't the head of IT but there wasn't anyone else to do the hiring.
I was asked to build the new wave of company laptops and that another employee was top priority. When I met him, his laptop was in pieces. Dirty with keys missing. He fobbed me off for a couple of weeks because he was afraid of losing data during the transfer.
That's when I found out he was actually the IT manager.
So who I thought was my manager was actually my colleague but served as the manager role, meanwhile the head of department wasn't that but I also answered to him and the IT Manager didn't actually have any involvement in the department at all but had the job title and position in the org chart.
I weren't there for long.
A certain UK TV satellite company had an opening for IT Vice president.
Did it go to someone skilled, with plenty of experience?
Nope! it went to a 16yr old boy literally just finished school with barely any IT knowledge whatsoever.
Co-incidentally he had the EXACT same rare italian surname as one of the board members.....
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