I.T. Rant

"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura) 09/09/2019 at 17:56 • Filed to: None

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It’s less of a rant and more of a bite me . I’m a teacher and I was the technology coordinator of a high school for five years, up until about five years ago. I had passwords to everything and maintained the Active Directory, the network, whatever. We got a new I.T. director who holds educators in contempt. When he came on board, he stripped any of us with any useful ability of all access to everything. Okay, whatever, bite me. (Forget that even now, five years later, I am more adept and far more conversant than any of his second-level techs...)

I turned in my district laptop because, even though I had the administrator password for it, by a fluke, I prefer having my own gear and my seven-year-old-or-older stuff, Dells with early Core i7 quad procs and SSDs, because my gear is better than anything the district has on offer.

Anyhow, today, I asked about connecting to one of the Xerox copiers that you can print to, and the tech guy said, “Too bad, no non-district equipment is to be connected to district printers.” I was like, whatever, since I already connected it myself .

Bite me. Bunch of teacher-hating putzes.

Wacko > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/09/2019 at 18:17

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I’m part of the I.T department, and in our Gold mine, only company owned and managed equipement is allowed to access our network. And the printers are in our network.  This is the correct strategy security wise, might seem overkill, but as an I.T professional you can’t trust what you don’t manage.  

Chariotoflove > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/09/2019 at 18:18

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Our IT is being overrun with these types currently. I and a couple other dedicated Mac users are holding them off. IT managers have the instinctive need to establish their dominance over everything in their domain, but they seldom have a true understanding of what works best for the people they are supposed to support.

Your job is to help me do my job, buddy. You remember, my job that is actually the mission of this entire institution?

Maxima Speed > Wacko 09/09/2019 at 18:26

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Agreed. There’s ways to be tactful and to help staff employees understand WHY change is happening but here are somethings that just have to be done whether people like it or not.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Wacko 09/09/2019 at 18:29

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Sure. But they’ve nothing in place to stop me from configuring an IP Port and sending a print job, or whatever.

I assume that you and your shop are competent, as well.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Chariotoflove 09/09/2019 at 18:31

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Egg ZACTLY. Hired to support people you find contemptible.

Easier if I just provide my own gear. Preferable in every way.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/09/2019 at 18:40

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When I joined the university as an assistant professor, I was provided my predecessor’s desktop computer. About a week later, they gave me a newer model , but I was told it would be at least three weeks before they could get it authorized on the network. E ach department had an IT rep, but authorizations were handled in the IT department which was across campus. I managed to get it on the network myself. Our department rep was both impressed and horrified that a lowly assistant prof could circumvent their security.

The company I work for now locks down the desktops, but gives most users local admin access to the laptops.

Chariotoflove > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/09/2019 at 18:47

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One of the things IT has had to stomach is the advent of iOS and Android personal devices on their network.  They have provided their own config files and tried to set up their own cloud and encourage us to use it, but they haven’t figured out how to take control of our phones and pads.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/09/2019 at 18:51

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I have to email an IT service desk for this and get 4 emails from an automated email system telling me they are working on it. We have 3 IT people in the entire company, I can also just call them and tell them shit’s not working.

jimz > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/09/2019 at 19:05

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every place seems to have at least one Preventer of Information Services.

Wacko > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/09/2019 at 19:28

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We might have a lot more at stake than a school, since we are a multi billion dollar mine. Our network won’t even acknowledge outside equipment.  

My boss was even talking about banning USB drives. Information leaks could greatly harm our company.

just-a-scratch > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/09/2019 at 20:10

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I .T. at work is centralized across all departments and we are not allowed to get outside help even when willing to pay for it.

IT often w ill not acknowledge issues for months.

Users are not allowed to install any software. (I understand why. It's just annoying. )

Too many things are being managed via SharePoint.

Despite having servers, cloud storage, and supposed recovery abilities, no one is able to recover an entire active project that was lost when files were migrated from one server location to another.

facw > Wacko 09/09/2019 at 21:12

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I agree that that’s probably the safe practice, but part of the cost of doing that is making sure that people are going to be happy with what you provide, so they won’t be missing their own devices. If what you are offering is much crappier than what they’d buy for themselves, you are probably doing something wrong, getting decent equipment is a pretty tiny cost compared to the other costs of employing someone, even a small productivity boost makes it worthwhile. Companies where the IT just says “you’ll take what we give you, even though it’s crap because we say so” are doing being penny wise and pound foolish.

Meanwhile, at my company it apparently doesn’t matter what you do (aside from irritatingly not allowing anyone admin privileges) because a disturbing percentage of our employees will apparently click anything in email, even when it’s an obvious phishing scam. And of course our IT’s security training videos were sent (with no prior notification) from a third-party, and it’s like “do you really want to teach people they should do anything with an email like this other than report it as phishing?”

cream wobbly > Chariotoflove 09/09/2019 at 21:48

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Okay, think about the burden of supporting a “byod” environment.

Hint: it’s a bit like being the cousin who happens to “hey, you work in computers, don’t you?” every time an elderly family member gets a virus, except magnified by about 4000.

The phrase for this is “technical debt”. Something looks easy now, but 3 years on, you’re the only one doing this, and you need very special attention. Again, magnified by about 4000.

One thing I’ve noted from my end users is that they appreciate being told exactly what is and what is not supported. We have a few “special” users who cling to their emacs and whatnot, but in the main, I can support thousands of users only because I set some very sweeping “one size fits most” rules.

But guess what? It can take 30 minutes to solve a problem for my thousands, because it’s something I designed into the environment. It can take several hours to solve a problem of similar complexity for my one-off holdout because it’s something I have to re-familiarize myself with. Meanwhile, I can’t use that time for something else.

Bottom line: Are you making several times as much money as your coworker? Because that’s the way you’re behaving, and that’s what you’re costing the company.

Chariotoflove > cream wobbly 09/09/2019 at 22:46

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Lots of assumptions there, and no small amount of projecting. But I can understand why you would be frustrated with users who complain.  

Back when I used to work at Michigan, we had a structured IT environment with guide lines. On top of that, we had IT support guys that worked with us to fit what we needed to do into the system as a whole. We appreciated their help and expertise, and they respected that we had specific needs in scientific and engineering software.

When I became faculty at the College where I am now, we had a local branch of IT staffed with the same kind of guys. They knew their stuff and they knew how to help us get done what we needed to when we had a problem. We worked together. They appreciated those of us who understood our systems because it helped them to diagnose and maintain.

Lately, we have been merged into direction from the central IT department down at the main campus 200 miles away. They have mandated one size fits all policies and layers of administration that delay the help we need and prevent us from getting the software packages we need. They don’t understand our needs and don’t want to. They have mandated the hiring of new IT people at our location who don’t understand what we are doing here. The old timers who used to help us are now prevented by policy. Their hands are tied and they aren’t happy about it, but they need their jobs with benefits.

The difference is between an IT service that tells its clients what to do and one that works as a partner  with those clients. It makes all the difference in the world.

Wacko > facw 09/09/2019 at 23:20

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For the data we give access to what is needed to do their jobs. Web has normal filters like porn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube ....

If OPPO ain’t blocked, then it’s fair.

facw > Wacko 09/09/2019 at 23:22

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I’m more concerned about hardware and software than website access, though my office has a habit of blocking forums with useful technical knowledge (fortunately I work remotely and can just pull stuff up on a personal device if things are blocked).

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > cream wobbly 09/10/2019 at 12:44

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I was in [a sort of] graduate school when iPad was foisted upon us. I wrote my “capstone” “paper” on how stupid and pointless I thought iPad was, at least in education, and how it wasn’t any good for anybody but Special Education and Old Men. An absolute nightmare to support and deploy and school districts everywhere were lining up at the trough to buy them as fast as they could. My original rant is more about IT in an education environment, than in a place that is constrained by reality. So yes, what you describe is practical, less unrealistic, and gives you a long shot prayer of being able to effectively support your people, people who may be stupid users, but not people that you hold in general contempt.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 09/10/2019 at 12:45

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And buy them a coffee when they make time to address your needs, hopefully.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jimz 09/10/2019 at 12:46

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Pretty much. Dilbert always nailed it, but Scott Adams is a seriously creepy dude.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Wacko 09/10/2019 at 12:47

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Our network won’t even acknowledge outside equipment.

Do all the MAC addresses get registered somewhere? How does that work?

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Wacko 09/10/2019 at 12:48

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If OPPO ain’t blocked, your filters are garbage.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > facw 09/10/2019 at 12:48

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I’d sign up for an unlimited data plan and either tether or use a tablet if it got too bad.

Wacko > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/10/2019 at 13:47

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Cisco Radius, only allows computers in our domain to connect, we do however have some mac address reservation for printers and other non computer equipment. 

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Wacko 09/10/2019 at 14:24

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What determines domain-ness? Active Directory?

Wacko > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/10/2019 at 14:43

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Active directory is used to manage the computers, users and groups on the domain.  

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Wacko 09/10/2019 at 16:00

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Yes, that was my understanding. We do not use AD as far as I can tell in this organization any more. Everyone uses Google Mail and Google Docs. There’s a Ruckus deal for WiFi, and there may be AD under that, but there’s an entire BYOD capability because there aren’t enough computers to go around and f0lks bring their own.

cream wobbly > Chariotoflove 09/12/2019 at 14:22

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Lots of assumptions there, and no small amount of proje cting.

No, I’m well-respected by the users who complain as much as my peers. Eventually. All users really want is stability and predictability.

Meanwhile, you don’t know what you’re talking about but you clearly think you do.

cream wobbly > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 09/12/2019 at 14:27

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I think you might vaguely be suggesting I hold people in general contempt. I don’t. I’m very specific about who I hold in contempt...

Chariotoflove > cream wobbly 09/12/2019 at 14:31

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Well, it’s more likely that I know what’s going on in my work environment than you do .

I happened to have a talk with the Associate Dean for Research yesterday during which he volunteered that upper administration throughout the Health Science Center  is becoming a bit fed up with the heavy handedness coming from IT since the merger, and some organized push back is coming. I suppose you can just tell yourself that they all don’t know what they are talking about either. Or, you could realize that my complaints about our IT situation isn’t a personal attack on you.

As I tried to convey, when IT works in partnership with the people they support, they are well-respected and appreciated, especially so by me . If you are by yours, then good, because that means you are probably doing your job well. So, good on you.

cream wobbly > Chariotoflove 09/12/2019 at 14:44

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you are probably doing you r job well

Just going by the bonuses originating from the user base, sure. More to the point, other people aren’t trying to do mine . Or if they do, it doesn’t last long.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > cream wobbly 09/12/2019 at 16:16

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Not at all, not even a tiny bit. Not in the least.

For my part, I find the I.T. regime at my educational organization, along with much of the higher-up “leadership,” as well as the union leadership, in general contempt. I definitely do.

If I had a non-education ( real) job, I might get frustrated with IT, but I doubt I’d find them contemptible. I’d be doing what I could to help them out.

So no. Nothing but love.