Discussion on:

Sanity check: 10 dirty little secrets you should know about working in IT

When I see somebody second-guessing me I
incorporate their own assumptions to my
next report, and let them apply their
flawed analysis on data to which I've
already applied their flawed analysis,
compounding their mistakes enough to be
detectable as theirs, not mine. They tend
to frown on this.

10.True
9.And vice versa
8.Yep
7.Actually, having to pass the tests nearly always makes you a better tech -- come on, admit it.
6. Yep.
5. & vice versa
4. Unless the people you work for have unlimited money, are a start-up or both.
3. Human nature.
2. ditto.
1. Okay, does it serve the company to always show your ass? Did the lack of that SQL test server have anything to do with the fact that your manager wouldn't buy you one? Does it always serve the company to show your manager's ass? Is discression the better part of valor? Is it better to live to fight another day? Learn from your mistake, figure out what you did wrong, don't lie, everybody makes mistakes, don't ever do that again, next time test that patch, and now you know why that old guy goes slow on implementing those bleeding edge technologies, maybe that other OS wasn't all that bad, SSH hacks got me in a lot of trouble in my Linux servers despite all the testing, we all could do with a little less finger pointing, this crap is really hard sometimes, tread lightly, and maybe that manager NEEDS some help with his home PC and will cover your ass when you need it later, etc. we're all in this together . . .

One dirty secret that I have found over the years is that regardless of your certifications, experience and general knowledge, the next job will be one where you know someone that knows someone that happens to know that someone has a position open that you might just possibly be the right candidate for. Looking for a job in this industry without a solid network is almost certain long-term unemployment.

10 - Not true anymore. It is more like , we don't pay you anything, but you are on salary, so bite it! Another reality, you are on salary when they need you after hours, but you are hourly when its time to go home, come in later than normal, take a long lunch, or long break.


3 - Actually, the biggest roadblock ( IMHO ) is that employees are not given time/resources to learn new technologies. Management thinks you are automatically an expert at every technology ( its all the same, right ? ) and that 900 thousand lines of code is just a point and click away.

It isn't a good career choice anymore. Deal with it.

You make a great point on No. 3. A lot of organizations simply don't devote enough resources to training and re-training IT staff. Of course, that's why a lot of self-motivated men and women come to TechRepublic - to learn the stuff that they need to get the job done (but don't have the time or training budget to go and learn in a formal setting).

This one has pulled back a bit, but it's still out there...

Fire everyone with dated skills rather than retrain them and hire people with the skills you want.

another reason to keep your skills up to date.

Fire everyone with dated skills rather than retrain them and hire people with the skills you want.

They're getting rid of expensive experience and replacing it with cheaper book-learning.

but I've been in on some of those meetings.

Saving training costs was certainly among their hopes, and they *did* shut down the training center.

I know of a consulting company that would (and does) hire a new person to work with the clients new equipment. If the train any of the older consultants on the new stuff the may leave the company or (as shocking as this thought is) ask for a raise. Once you start working for that company you rerly get a raise. Believe it or not I heard that they had a management meeting to determine why the consultant staff keep leaving.

I never thought about it that way, but your opinion on #1 is dead on. I have had many employers that treat you as an hourly employee with no overtime.

Most if not all mentioned above are actually lame excuses for IT professionals with no vision and/or are contented in their comfort zone. UHUH!

#1-Everyone's Problem Is An EMERGENCY, and more important than anything else!!

The most annoying thing I run into, are people that think their issue is more important that anything else. People don't realize that their "oops I downloaded something accidentally on the internet and now i'm getting annoying weather pop-ups and I need this removed NOW" emergency is actually interrupting someone elses "emergency" OR an actual emergency. Everyone is so impatient when it comes to you fixing their problem.

They could care less if you're the only IT person, they expect immediate results, and when they don't get them...they either complain to their supervisor, or they go above your head and send your boss an e-mail over how you are not taking care of their issue.

#2-True Vacations Are ALMOST Impossible
Either you don't take vacation time because you're worried about what will happen while you are gone..OR you take the vacation time, and people constantly call you, e-mail you, etc. while you are away. It's good to be needed, but most non-IT employees don't think twice about disturbing you while you are on vacation.

#3-Be prepared to work loooooooong hours, holidays, and forget those days when the boss says everyone can go home early!
A bored IT person, is either really lazy or burnt out. There are ALWAYS mountains of things to do. Work is never truly "done" because as soon as you close the book on one issue, you will have 10 more.

#4-Inherited Networks Are ALWAYS A Nightmare
Any IT Veteran could tell you that coming in as "the new IT person" especially if you are the only IT person is an absolute nightmare of bandaid fixes, systems on the verge of getting up and walking out in protest, undocumented everything, more problems that even a team of people could deal with in any reasonable amount of time...and on and on and on. From my experience, you never really get rid of old relics from the last person. There will always be something that pops up that makes you say, "what were they thinking?! why did they do that!!?".

#5-Company Policies Are What They Are
I've seen many new Admins come in and think they could change an entire companies policies in a week. They bring alot of enthusiasm (sometimes over enthusiasm) to the teams, but also inexperience (which can sometimes be dangerous). Often times, they have to be reprogrammed from "text book" thinking. Some IT Professionals don't realize that book smarts are only a part of doing the job. It takes problem solving skills and on-the-job training. No amount of book smarts can prepare you for some of the stuff I have seen.

#6-Egotistical IT People
Another highly annoying thing about being in the IT industry, is that you will occasionally run into people that think they know EVERYTHING and that you are gum on their shoe. My advice to anyone is not to even try to battle with these people and don't worry about them trying to prove their greatness by talking down to you (they go home hating themselves at the end of the day anyways). I just do my best to tolerate these people and change the subject or totally avoid talking "pc" with them completely.

#7-I don't advise making friends of non-IT co-workers.
This is something that is hard to do for an IT person, and if it is easy..you will most likely come to regret it later. The main reason is that at some point in your career someone you think highly of will do something totally stupid and either break company policy, screw something up to the point that it stops entire departments from functioning, etc. When you have your manager OR the CEO of a company starring at you demanding to know "who did this?!" or "what happened?!" the person who thinks they are your friend will now hate you because you "ratted them out". There have been many times where i've had to confront people for downloading mp3's, looking at questionable content, etc..this is really hard to do when the person considers you to be their friend.

#8-If you need temporary help at work DO NOT employ your friends or family.
Trust me on this and save yourself the embarrassment. Either the person(s) will take advantage that you are close to them and be completely lazy, do something or say something to one of your co-workers that is innapropriate, come to work casually dressed (or worse)in a suit and tie environment, etc.. It's better to completely avoid this and find someone from a temp agency that you don't know and don't have to see at parties and/or family gatherings.

#9-The UN-IT Manager
For some of us unlucky IT people, we will eventually stumble upon a job that involves working for someone that knows SQUAT (nothing) about computers, servers, routers, or even how a phone works. I try to avoid this at ALL costs mostly because these types will more than likely underpay you, underestimate (or overestimate) you and expect you to know how to do everything, most of the time they think everything is possible and you are going to figure it out for them, you will end up doing the work of 10 people (and half of it won't be IT-related). Also, it's hard to explain to them that a server needs to be replaced or repaired and try to justify spending any money to them.

#10-Over Showcasing Skills Can Be A Bad Thing
I try to never let people know the full extent of my abilities. If you do this, you'll quickly become the "go to" person for EVERY problem revolving around your special skills. This can be both good and bad. But your workload will pile up faster than you might expect. For example, if you are an IT Admin and you are a certified ms office expert this is a good thing to put on a resume..but NOT a good thing to showcase to fellow co-workers because you will then be tasked with "oh i need a powerpoint done in 5 minutes" or "can you turn these PDF's into word documents". These types of things can and WILL eat up COUNTLESS HOURS maybe even DAYS if you aren't careful.

#11-Be prepared to deal with TONS of office politics AND a motherload of red tape.
Many times, IT people are faced with doing things that they might think wrong, unfair, inappropriate, etc. They don't teach you this stuff in school. They don't tell you that sometimes you have to monitor an employee and report their website usage (that will later get them fired) all because someone didn't really like them and wanted them gone. Or when the Executive Director does something illegal or completely against the company policy that HE WROTE that you are supposed to just look away. Anyone that thinks they are going into IT to do companies "justice" is in for a shock.

Well done.

this is true for all IT professionals

I will have to admit I have been guilty of doing number one on more than a few occasions. For the most part it wasn't because something was broken, it was to delay or to distract because of time deadlines could not be met. Overall the general moral of this list would be, EVERYONE IN THE FRICKIN WORLD SHOULD BE TAUGHT BASIC COMPUTER SKILLS! That way it would eliminate some of the more annoying ones in the list that us IT's have to deal with when working with dipshits.

EVERYONE IN THE FRICKIN WORLD SHOULD BE TAUGHT BASIC COMPUTER SKILLS!

... that everyone can be successfully taught basic computer skills. Sadly, that assumption is false.

"EVERYONE IN THE FRICKIN WORLD SHOULD BE
TAUGHT BASIC COMPUTER SKILLS!"

A lot of things can be, and have been,
successfully done on very large
scales prior to the widespread use of
personal computers. A lot of the impact of
that widespread use has been ... not what I
would call beneficial.

For as long as there are foreign professionals working for $10/hr here in the US, we will not be recognized as professionals. They always graduated from the best university that no one knows because it is in some foreign country.

I agree..

True to life experience will prove them true

..or 'if the flow of electrons is more than consequential to the function...'

It appears this "IT guy (of whatever specialty) = general building superintendent" is quite a large and apparently growing phenomenon.

I feel your pain, it's the pressure of "we can get 10 guys in India for what we pay you" globalist, outsourced world agenda.

I'd say, with the utmost sympathy, (so no flames, plz) it's best to count your blessings.

But unlike most career IT folk, I do not work for one leviathan, rather I have numerous clients of varying size, most of them quite small, under 20 stations system wide doing various tasks.

In these shoes, I am not seen as "laying around idle" to be tapped to change light bulbs, etc. They perceive my presence as "he's here to fix the dang... (whatever)" but *whatever* is always right up my alley.

Seeing me as an expense ONLY related to the smooth operations of the IT infrastructure, they hesitate to ask me to linger on the clock to do extraneous mundane things.

That said, I am always actually offering to change out a few bad lights, take a look at the phones, etc., with the understanding this is by my good graces, not because they think they own my butt and think I'm idle and unproductive.

Face it, the climate has created the perception that ALL employees are liabilities, not an asset.

In fact back in my aviation days I flew a fellow into town for a business 'round table,' who had literally written the book a few decades ago on this fundamental shift in management "thinking." I was stunned by what this fellow told me, needless to say the world you see does not surprise me, I saw the plans being lain a long time ago.

I quote "thinking" above because it's really more "conditioning" so management is in line with this global agenda of "break the backs of the working class = moremoremore $$$ at the top."

If at all possible you should consider becoming a wild cat like I am, with a few smaller (and more appreciative, believe me) clients, rather than the "full time job" model.

That model is only going to get worse with time, until the people wake up and make fundamental political change... wait for it...

Google "Ron Paul 2008" for an eye on the needed change...

(insert gratuitous religious argument here )

Anyway, when I voluntarily help with otherwise non-related electrical (even plumbing!) problems it is immensely appreciated, and a confirmation they have the right guy for the IT needs, rather than expected because I'm on any payroll.

It took a looong time to get here, but well worth it.

I remind you salaried types a lawn mover uses electricity, too...

cat

it is good

I've been at this game since VAX's were clustered, and I've seen quite a bit of all of the above. The one that gets me laughing everytime that I remember it is:

"What do you meen it's gonna cost $1999?!? You were only working on it for 10 minutes!"

My reply, however polotically incorrect is always "Funny, you could have fixed it cheaper, and yet you called me. Next time don't break it!"

(It's taken me 25+ years to know how to fix it in 10 minutes.)

Honey, I used to be a nurse, this is no different except it's a lot cleaner and the pay is better. If antone goes into a job expecting to be thought of as a hero all the time they need to read Aesops fables, there's always someone out there to pull that rug out from under you

Thats all I have to say...end user support calls!

I lost count of how many new "dirty little secrets" were added, so please correct the numbers if applicable. But here go two more:

19) If you are more skilled than your bosses, they will see you as a menace and will do everything to ostracize you.

Specifically, I have an M.S. in medical IT applications (aside from considerable experience selecting, deploying and maintaining hospital information systems) and once worked at the IT Department of one of the best and most prestigious hospitals here in Brazil. They wouldn't let me even come near their mission-critical applications or opine on their tech decisions. Instead, they made me work in their e-mail systems and Internet infrastructure (another of my strengths, but not as valuable to them as my HIS expertise would have been).

They ended up purchasing a very expensive and complex HIS solution that was technologically outdated and whose deployment costs were three times what they had expected at first. I could have avoided that, but then, of course, I would also be avoiding whatever personal benefits high management would be getting from that choice (from free trips as far as South Korea to "evaluate the system" to just offering a different solution from a disgraced political rival in the company to actual bribery, which was strongly rumored to have happened).

20) Too much time out of an IT job means there is no return.

I eventually quit the job I mentioned above for unrelated health reasons. I became seriously ill and had to take a very long major-sickness leave. When I was ready to return, they fired me. In the meantime, the marketplace had changed and they were outsourcing everything. My experience and qualifications worked *against* me, because for the price of my salary they could hire two or three young guys just out of college (often just out of their diapers) who they could easily dispose of and replace when their limited, focused expertise was no longer needed.

Also, hyperspecialization in very specific tech products (say, module XYZ of SAP) was valued, general adaptable multi-skilled professionals were not. High HR turnover was considered good, keeping well-paid competent people who knew the business and its workings was bad for business.

I still have an interest in IT, and this is why I subscribe and read this. But I never worked in IT again. I had to switch to an entirely different career: I am now a technical translator, using my English skills (formerly just an added-value item in my resume) to survive. I get paid less and have a few other problems. But I get some comfort when I think of all those "dirty little secrets" I left behind. IT really has too many of them compared to other careers...

As a manager, if I see someone more skilled than me in an area, I will delegate some things to use that talent. And thats both selfish of me, and good for the employee, who is now seen as a more valued contributor.

It should be a natural part of development - delegate some challenging tasks and see how the employee copes (with some support and guidance). Also selfishly, I can't be promoted until I can be replaced. If I don't have a strong number 2 I might be sabotaging my own career.

I've got an unlimited plate full of things to tackle. It will never be empty. Delegation allows me to tackle some other things I might not get to otherwise. It also makes me look like a good manager. Really you want to get the most "value" out of each employee you have, and forcing them to do less than their best is not in the company's interest. It may work for a selfish controlling boss in the short term, but not in the long run.

If you are translating as an independant contractor, you can be much freer that someone working in IT in a large corporation.

James

I delegate the same as you, or at least try to. Sometimes I won't just to try to keep my skills current, which I hope is understandable. But in prior jobs I have had managers (actually just one) who did try to keep the more skilled people down, mostly in fear of the threat the employee was to them. Sad but true.
The last I heard this IT manager was working stocking shelfs in a store somewhere. It back fired and he paid for poor judgement, although it took some time.
A good lesson to keep in mind.

Love this article it is well thought of and so accurate it's like the writer has been watching me work for over a decade.

I forgot how my value as an IT Pro goes up and down like stock based their perception of my performances!

Great article! Pretty true, especially the part about implementing new technologies. As a long time IT'er I enjoy implementing new technologies; however that cannot be said for some of my long time IT'er colleagues.

absolutely correct.........!!

You forgot one secret, that IT people spend too much time reading and posting comments on stuff like this. 308 comments - that's ridiculous!!!

Yep, IT pros love to debate and discuss online.

You should see some of our Windows-Linux religious war posts. Some of those have over 500 comments!

I should feel somewhat buoyed, as a career changer, looking to enter IT!

These secrets can readily describe elements of my former job in an unrelated but highly technical field/industry.

With regards to #3, this *may* be true on some instances, BUT (notice the upper case BUT) - I've seen more projects fail due to the overly energetic leaping into new technology by the "young guns" than by the slow progress from the "old pros". Although new technology is a great thing and can, and often does, bring new capabilities to the company - it doesn't always fit well into the business applications and overall well being of the company - which is where your loyalty, energy, and focus should be. I've found to many of the "young guns" that think the company owes them the latest technology to play around with rather than looking at where the company is going, what technology is *necessary* to support the company goals, and where does technology fit into the budget? After all, aren't all employees hired to help the company be profitable? If those of us in IT don't understand that, or have lost sight of that fact, then it's time we take our heads out of the servers and routers and look at the real world around us. Companies don't hire us - unless you are lucky enough to work for a technology research company - to play with new technology and learn about the bells & whistles of the latest & greatest. They hire us to provide the necessary tools for the other business units to do their jobs and make money for the owner and/or stock holders. It's called "business" for a reason. Some of us "old hands" (yes, I've been in IT for 34 years) understand that concept and add value to the company while at the same time, have the "energy" and desire to look at new technology as it might apply to helping the company be more successful. Remember this - if you stay in IT, someday YOU will be that "old timer" that is more cautious and business oriented with the "youngsters" yammering at your heels to do more experimenting and buying of new "things".

Ron

I agree. And the clients who request the most are the charity clients, local groups you do free work for. I forwarded this article link to my boss. Thanks. Lists are good blog post strategy.

I am some what agreed with above statements, but its a part of profession.

It's all true. Nice one.

You also have to cover AND watch your ass and assets at all times if you are an IT Manager. Be careful who you make enemies with. This can happen when you least expect it. There was someone mad at me where I was working and I was totally unaware of this. They managed to steal 5 laptops. Guess who was terminated for not properly managing their department. I get terminated because some sh**head wants to steal company property. That is how some people will move ahead.