
Our IT guy is an unresponsive jerk - protomyth
http://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/our-it-guy-is-an-unresponsive-jerk.html
======
lsiunsuex
"We’re a small company, and our IT department consists of one individual. He
often works on high pressure, involved projects that affect the entire
company. However, there’s no one on call for day-to-day issues like common
printer problems or computer freeze-ups. He usually works with his door closed
or is frequently off site, so contacting him is not always easy or direct. "

and

"He is also curt and dismissive, especially with junior staff—mostly part-
timers, moms with kids—who don’t have a lot of experience troubleshooting
computer problems."

This is HN, so I may be stating the obvious - but if IT is under-staffed, this
guy has work that needs his direct, uninterrupted attention - and people
wonder why he might be a jerk or dismissive ?

People tend to forget or not know how IT works. If your a manager, you might
have x employees reporting to you. So you are directly responsible for those
employees and whoever you report to.

Sales? Same - you need to report to your boss and the customer. Customer
Service? The customer and your boss.

But IT generally needs to report to the entire division or company. One of my
last jobs, there were 2 of us in IT and the company was 500 employees. And we
had our own uninterrupted work we needed to get done. And we did help desk,
were off site, etc... And we had to account for any 1 of the 500 employees at
any given moment needing support or a server going down or code to be written
or a security camera going out, or pulling a backup cause someone clicked
"delete" by accident, or etc...

I'm not saying it's acceptable to be a jerk or whatever term people what to
use. I'm saying, while (random employee) might be responsible for say 10
people, IT is generally responsible for entire organizations. Slack, is to be
cut, sometimes.

~~~
jerf
"but if IT is under-staffed, this guy has work that needs his direct,
uninterrupted attention - and people wonder why he might be a jerk or
dismissive ?"

From where we are and the evidence given in the post, we can't distinguish
between "legitimately a jerk" and "overstressed by interruptions and lacking
the emotional bandwidth to deal with people". And, you know, there's even the
possibility that he's dealing with the IT requests completely professionally,
and that's being _interpreted_ as being a jerk, because IT interactions seem
to be somehow particularly prone to that sort of thing. (Probably the problems
of getting an engineering, technically-focused person dealing with more people
with very different social interaction protocols.)

~~~
pc86
If he lacks the emotional bandwidth to deal with people, I'd say he hasn't
earned that "IT professional" title he wants people to use.

------
lanestp
I've been in situations like this. Being a "jerk" is a defense mechanism. If
you are approachable then everyone brings their technical problems (personal
and professional) to you. If you are unapproachable you stand a chance of
actually getting 10 minutes of uninterrupted time.

~~~
xraystyle
I've been there too, I get it. I'm trying to roll out a new company-wide
backup platform and people come by my desk because Candy Crush isn't working
on their personal iPad.

Non-technical people have a very strong tendency to treat their co-workers in
I.T. as their personal tech support, and managers outside of I.T. don't
understand why you can't just make the developer/sysadmin/network
engineer/dba/whatever do all the BS helpdesk work at the same time.

------
satysin
While the guy might well be a jerk and rude it is also very likely he is
stressed and overworked. Sounds like the company needs a junior sysadmin to
handle the help desk.

Also sounds like this guy is more of a technical specialist/project
manager/possibly devops and not just "the IT guy".

~~~
minipci1321
Exactly! "overstressed" seems to me like a much more frequent reason of a
misbehaviour at workplace than "a jerk".

And, as you say, one needs an suitable inclination to work with people too.

Edit: some companies have rotating days of desk-support for such personnel,
but for that, one needs to have at least 2 of them.

~~~
satysin
At Xerox we had a rotating help desk system for a while. It was pretty awful
for everyone (those on the rotor and those needing support) as you quickly
lose your _edge_ at quickly fixing common issues. If you do it for one day a
month (as we did) they it is just a pain in the ass as for one day a month you
are expected to be able to fix weird MS Office errors or printer problems. It
is _always_ better to pay a little more and have a single person dedicated to
handling such issues. There is no shortage of people wanting to get a foot in
the door at low level tech support so it isn't going to blow the budget out of
the water. In my experience it is actually the opposite as you end up wasting
money on getting people to cover a position and they are never as effective as
a dedicated person who will come across common issues and be able to resolve
them much faster.

------
protomyth
I'm trying to figure out which professions it is acceptable to say [JOB] Guy?

~~~
matt4077
I don't think it's all derogatory – it just highlights the fact that there's
exactly one person for that job in the organization. I could, for example,
imagine a cook being called 'our Creme Brulee Guy' if it's his speciality.

Or that character in 'How I met your mother' who had a suit guy, a Yankees
ticket guy, a flower guy and – if new needs arise – a guy guy.

~~~
protomyth
I think its pretty derogatory and unprofessional. See how far Brain Guy goes
in an organization with one psychologist. I would imagine a "rebuke" and a
remembrance of the word "Doctor" would occur.

"How I Met Your Mother" was a comedy, and that what a [JOB] Guy title makes
the person.

------
CrankyBear
And, this is different from most IT support people how??? :-)

Seriously. The guy's over-worked. Get him some help.

------
soneil
This is the same site that made the rounds with "I fired someone for going to
their graduation" last week. I can't help but suspect this is going to become
quite baity, quite quickly.

------
eemikula
I can't help but wonder if this isn't about the author misinterpreting the job
of the "IT Guy." If he insists that the title is "Systems Administrator" or
"IT Professional" rather than "IT Guy," maybe that's because help desk stuff
specifically isn't his job, and the non-technical writer here doesn't
understand the distinction. It would certainly explain both his overworked
state and his reaction to being asked questions.

------
RankingMember
The bigger issue is that this place sounds like it has insufficient or
otherwise incompetent management, which will inevitably create issues like
this downstream. I'd bet that if you looked in other departments at this
company, you'd find similar role confusion/dysfunction.

Someone doing big IT projects cannot be expected to also do desktop support at
the same time (and shouldn't become the de facto support person simply because
they have technical knowledge).

------
dkuntz2
I made the mistake of reading the comments section. I can't fathom how people
take such pride in their lack of knowing how computers work. Sure, there are
things I don't know, but I don't think I'd ever take pride in that ignorance.

~~~
VLM
Well, if its any consolation, just be happy you're not a mathematician. Or an
English Lit grad.

------
VLM
Interdepartmental warfare is epidemic at large companies, but it happens at
small ones too.

If your employees can push the power switch they become documented as
responsible for pushing the power switch and if something bad happens you can
always push the blame onto the IT guy for not pushing the power switch for
them, and as long as the IT guy isn't one of your direct reports you just
"won" that round of office politics. Learned weakness is passive aggressive
and very popular and effective as a weapon. A dry cleaner would never tolerate
a customer demanding they shouldn't have to know how to zip up their pants or
a plumber would never tolerate a customer demanding the plumber flush the
toilet for them because they don't understand these pipey things. But IT guys
are not known for their social skills and now every problem is their problem
because only IT guys should have to know the technical details of putting
paper in the printer. Resulting in the IT guy is the only person in the
company responsible for the tax documents not being filed on time, or that
lost big sale, because due to bad social skills the buck stops with IT instead
of passing it like all the other departments do. (and edited to add that
getting rid of a scapegoat, like "that bad IT guy" isn't magically going to
get the tax forms sent by the deadline, picking a new scapegoat isn't going to
fix anything)

There's a side dish of LMFGTFY. Seriously, you're an adult who got themselves
dressed and fed and drove to work, you goof off on facebook four hours per
workday, you can handle using google. It's just a primate dominance ritual to
force you to google something for me. No different than me demanding you wash
my car or shine my shoes. Its even worse when its not work related.

There is a difference between responsibilities and skills. An IT guy is
responsible for keeping the wifi access point operational and secure. He's got
a responsibility. He's not a bucket of skills waiting to be sloshed on anyone
too lazy to plug in a power cord. The company made a huge mistake of hiring
unskilled employees. If you want to use a centerless grinding machine on a
factory floor to earn a profit, you hire machinists who have a clue about
centerless grinding machines or you fail and go out of business. You don't
yell at the only guy on the floor who knows what he's doing because he's a
convenient low caste individual to blame or mumble about how people should be
nicer because not everyone knows how to skillfully operate centerless grinder
machines so its all somehow the fault of the one guy who knows. Learn or GTFO.
If you want to use computers you hire staff who know computers or you go out
of business because a competitor is more competent. All activity across all
lines of business is a tightrope between applying your skills (which you
better have else prepare to suffer or GTFO voluntarily or otherwise) vs
respecting someone else area of responsibility, this is not an IT thing or a
finance thing or a shipping thing this is a universal balance problem for all
business activity. Management is 100% responsible for their mistake although
it MIGHT be justified if there are extenuating circumstances. In that case
expect complaints about general employee IT incompetence to be blown off by
mgmt. "We hired you because you're great at Y, yes we know you're completely
inadequate at X despite X being required to do your job, and every time you
get involved with X its frustrating for everyone involved, everyone, I assure
you, and nothing is going to change as long as you keep high performing in Y
and carefully avoid any training or learning about X".

------
draw_down
"I haven't considered the terrible situation this person has been put in, and
I'm all out of ideas!"

~~~
matt4077
Let's maybe not throw around terms like 'terrible situation' for someone being
ask to fix a printer here or there. Even amongst the #firstwordproblems it
just seems to lack the je-ne-sais-quoi of real tragedies.

~~~
dkuntz2
The terrible situation is the implicit "IT Guy" having to do actual sysadmin
work and being interrupted with the "hey fix this printer".

Also, being asked to fix a printer is pretty frustrating, because at best
someone either is using past knowledge, or using google to diagnose, which is
something pretty much any person could do.

------
mimo777
Resource management and leveling, how does it work?

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Often times the accusation of jerky behavior can be one sided. To an IT
person, it can be frustrating if they are dealing with the same issues from
the same people over and over again.

Here is an analogy. Suppose the company had a policy of submitting your
timesheet rounded to the nearest half-hour every Friday. Suppose an employee
comes to HR in person unannounced on Friday with a list of hours worked every
day that week, for example, 7.4, 7.6, 7.7,7.8,7.9. For each of the numbers he
asks the HR person (it is a small company so they only have on HR person) what
he should enter in his timesheet. The first time, the HR person might tell him
the company policy and give the answers (7.5,7.5,7.5,8,8). If the person does
this every week (even with slightly different numbers) is the HR person always
going to be kind, smiling, and affirming? After a while, there is a high
likelihood that the HR person would at least once sigh, roll their eyes, and
give curt answers. Would people call the HR person a jerk for this response -
after all this is part of their job?

At any company, there are people who want to do their job with the least
amount of thought and effort possible. An IT person can be seen as a better
Siri. Instead of thinking about a problem or even trying to look it up online,
it is faster and easier for them just to dump it off to another person. These
types of people can monopolize an IT person's time. Unfortunately, the IT
person is often at a level where they cannot formally complain about people
abusing their time. Thus, as a self-protection mechanism, they try to change
the incentives. Calling the IT person with your problem will save you from
having to think about it, but you will pay for it by having to undergo
condescension. After a while this type of behavior can become ingrained in IT
and be used against everybody, not just bad actors.

How can a company fix this? First, do not tolerate jerky behavior as that can
ruin company culture. Second, have a policy in place that abuse of an IT
person's time will not be tolerated. As an employee, you are required to be
sufficiently knowledgeable about your tools - one of which is a computer.
People abusing the IT person will have to undergo mandatory training or face
disciplinary action. Have the IT person document each request and who asked
for it. Review them periodically, to find people who are abusing the system. A
company would not tolerate someone who always asked a coworker to write their
reports because they are poor at grammar and spelling. So, they should not
tolerate someone always asking IT about routine computer issues.

Doing this can remove the incentive for jerky behavior from IT as they can
just quickly document the requests knowing that abuse will be dealt with by
management. For your workers, they know that IT is there as a resource that is
happy to help them but is not a substitute for Google. I think this would
result in an overall win-win situation.

