1

I’m sort of referring to people who may have had a few low-level IT jobs, maybe an internship…perhaps this could apply to people who have worked longer.

Have you ever encountered an environment that at first (due to lack of knowledge, Oz-Wizard like confabulation on the part of the IT-boss, Kool-Aid, etc.) seemed really complicated and sophisticated and said IT-boss seemed like a total guru with a lot of esoteric knowledge.

Then as you see more environments and perhaps build your own, you start to see how totally ass-backward the Oz-Wizard’s environment was, and that his/her “esoteric knowledge” was actually them just BS-ing everything to seem much more complicated than it needs to be for the sake of “job security”?

Anyone know them feels?

Personally, I worked for a place where:

  • there was no ticketing system

  • users couldn’t add their own printers (they had to be manually added and the drivers downloaded every single time as there was no print server let alone a driver repository)

  • I was instructed to not show users how to do relatively basic tasks

  • there was no such thing as a standard deployment image (Oz-Wizard preferred to use the OOB mix of XP, Vista, and 7, and just remove the bloatware and there were people using a mix of Excel, OpenOffice, and Libre Office)

  • the server room (a la Oz-Wizard, the “data center”) was in a furnace room, and was a single rack, unlocked, in an un-air-conditioned room that always had the door open. The other “data center” was a server rack sitting in a warehouse

  • there was near no virtualization. There was one server per appliance. There were several “backup servers” made from desktop PC’s, used because the network was too ghetto to back up a server across the building because it was more than 300 feet away from the “real” backup server

42 Spice ups
2

I’m in that starter feeling right now. In school we really didn’t get to much into hardware, so when I got shown the server room I was a little lost. Still trying to wrap my head around SANS, VM hosts, isci adapters and how they all inter connect. Kind of wish I took advance hardware class, but it was my last semester when they made it and I just wanted to be done lol.

But everything here works for the most part, the bs parts are more the software vendors requirements than my boss lol.

3 Spice ups
3

Yes.

4

Jared, I feel your pain. I may ahve more experience now than I did when I started, but I still look at the server rack with a look of 'What hte hell is all this crap and what do I never touch!?" The good news, is that comes with time.

Back to MScott, I thankfully have not. The internship I had was with a guy who did Networking for fifteen years with the theme parks in Orlando, FL. At current, the guy I work under has done about five-ten years of IT, and is running his own IT company, and about to build a second one.

5

While I am not a noob to IT, I am in radio and know exactly what you are talking about. When I first landed this position, I just about freaked out at the trash they were using for servers, desktops, laptops, etc. After 3 years of not having any kind of budget and having to MacGuiver everything, I learned to just deal with it.

Its sad when your home network is vastly superior in every way to that in which you work in Monday - Friday.

8 Spice ups
6

That happens to everyone. problem is when the Oz made the network his techniques were probably the latest or the best they could do at the time and just like any department we also like the comfortable dont fix it if it aint broke thing. so really you should be looking at this as an opportunity to affect change. But, remember your new to the industry… your boss might have some very good reasons why things are done the way things are done, and budget might be one of them.

1 Spice up
7

It’s the kinda place you turn up for an interview and smile politely a lot.

5 Spice ups
8

Sounds like he was old school on virtulization or lazy.

No print server what the heck? (printers are the second bane of IT the first is fax IMO)

Ticketing system well depends on the size of the workplace but I noticed really helps me keep up. otherwise emails explode and you lose them in the mix.

Image, well again depends on size of the company, and what has to be installed on a new PC, I prefer an image but sometimes money and time constraints kick that out. and you just have to go with it.

Data centers well when you start asking to upgrade them you need a good reason , cause they are working fine now from management attitude. maybe he was not good at asking for money and just kept band aiding everything?

3 Spice ups
9

Sad to say, but I think we all have been there. I have worked several professions before landing in IT. There is always that one guy you wont tell anyone how to do his job because knowledge is power.

1 Spice up
10

Yup. But to be honest the next guy that comes in to work with you might think the same thing. We have best practices sure but some people don’t follow them or modify them a bit to make the betterer bestest practices in their opinion.

11

Yep! The IT director at my previous job was that way. If everyone on the planet told him he was stupid at the same time, his ego will still be loud enough to over power everyone and he would still think he is God’s gift to the world.

2 Spice ups
12

A lot of what IT Pros do is cleaning up other people’s ugly messes… and it can take years to shake off all repercussions of bad decisions. One way to turn it into something positive is to view it as job security. There’s a lot to clean up when someone technically incompetent or of questionable mental stability (or both) is in charge for a while, and it takes planning, preparation, money and time. That will keep you working and knowledgable!

And yes, when I started out, I ran into “bosses” that I now know were not as skilled as they would have senior management believe… there are a lot of IT poseurs out there!

13

If it tells you anything, he showed up at 11a, went to lunch from 12p-1p and left around 230p lol.

14

I am both envious of and irritated by people like this. They are such good BS artists that they don’t need to be good at anything but BS-ing.

3 Spice ups
15

It seems like a 3B scenario: Bullshit Baffles Brains. I’ve encountered a few people in my time who think they’re talking a good game, and will generally baffle the uninitiated. However, if there’s someone who has a modicum of understanding regarding the subject matter, they’ll generally “look behind the curtain” to see a bombastic little person working the levers.

The biggest challenge then, of course, is down to office politics. If someone has the ear of a senior manager who thinks they do no wrong, you’re really going to have a Sisyphean task trying to change their half-baked, inefficient, and outmoded work practices.

2 Spice ups
16

I’ve been there a couple of times. Both times were in smaller shops where I was the only other IT guy there. The first guy basically built the network from the ground up, and he felt like I was “poaching his territory”. Nobody likes to think they’re replaceable, I guess.

I think it’s just like you said, it’s about job security. I’ve also learned when you can start telling when your boss is full of BS and when he’s telling you something useful, your education will grow exponentially because you’ll know when to listen to him and when to ignore him.

Beyond that, there was another guy I worked for I thought was full of it and didn’t want to show me anything. Turns out he a) thought I already knew it or b) didn’t think I was interested. Once I started being more verbal about asking what he was doing and asking him to clarify things he was more than happy to teach me anything he knew. He was a fantastic boss, and I only left because he sold the company (he was also the owner) for a tidy profit. Might be worth talking to your fearless leader and asking some “what’s this do” questions.

17

That’s also where soft skills can come in handy. If you can convince them it was their idea and that all the credit should go to them, you’ll be able to get what you want and they get what they want. People skills are fun.

1 Spice up
18

I inherited something similar:

No ticket system; people used to email the boss, which would often black hole.
There was no asset database; god knows who had what!
All users were administrators on any PC

1 Spice up
19

His response when anyone in management asked “What do you actually do?” he would take 1-2 weeks off and let things slowly crumble because it was half-baked and couldn’t go two weeks without breaking down.

2 Spice ups
20

W

O

W