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Last week we interviewed for an IT technician. Candidate 1 spent a good ten minutes on his work with NT. We kept looking.
The candidate's enthusiasm rapidly fades and they terminate the interview having realized you are not particularly interested in the last 5~10 experience on their resume nor their latest product certifications.
[Aside: A few years back I had exactly this problem with a datacentre transformation and virtualisation project, where we uncovered 100+ NT servers and needed to assemble a team to "unravel the spaghetti".]
[Aside: A few years back I had exactly this problem with a datacentre transformation and virtualisation project, where we uncovered 100+ NT servers and needed to assemble a team to "unravel the spaghetti".]
we're still running Office 2003 here, on Win7 it's a complete buggy nightmare. It's funny to think that the new, out of college hires coming in as of May will be using software that was released when they were finishing Jr. High / Middle School. Funny or sad? We're planning to upgrade Q3/Q4 finally... doesn't go unnoticed by the un-tech-savvy, not a day goes by where people don't ask me about it.
How many companies out there are still running Office 2003, even on brand new systems?
How many companies out there are still running Office 2003, even on brand new systems?
Although we're also running XP here.
Surprised you're having bugs, though. I'm also running it at home on Windows 7 (64-bit Professional), & I haven't had any problems with it.
Surprised you're having bugs, though. I'm also running it at home on Windows 7 (64-bit Professional), & I haven't had any problems with it.
At a job that I left in 2011 the company is still running Windows XP and IE7 because a proprietary database won't work with anything newer.
I considered myself lucky to have a workstation with 1 GB of ram (most machines have 512mb) despite having shared video, and was told by IT that I didn't need any more ram to run the multiple programs I needed to keep open, and their "fix" for my workstation was to increase the size of the swap file on the ...vintage 80 GB hard drives.
We also won't get started on accessing a client's copy of an outdated version of IBM CICS over an unreliable Citrix connection or being told by my supervisor that the fillable PDF forms I created with OpenOffice to allow us to email information to clients instead of faxing handwritten forms required a full copy of Adobe Acrobat on every workstation instead of the copy of Acrobat Reader that was already installed...
Methinks it's time for the company to spend money on the tools to let employees be more productive in order to let us help the company to make more money!
I considered myself lucky to have a workstation with 1 GB of ram (most machines have 512mb) despite having shared video, and was told by IT that I didn't need any more ram to run the multiple programs I needed to keep open, and their "fix" for my workstation was to increase the size of the swap file on the ...vintage 80 GB hard drives.
We also won't get started on accessing a client's copy of an outdated version of IBM CICS over an unreliable Citrix connection or being told by my supervisor that the fillable PDF forms I created with OpenOffice to allow us to email information to clients instead of faxing handwritten forms required a full copy of Adobe Acrobat on every workstation instead of the copy of Acrobat Reader that was already installed...
Methinks it's time for the company to spend money on the tools to let employees be more productive in order to let us help the company to make more money!
"No, you do not want end users to attempt to dictate IT policies. " this is very old school thinking where IT is god and users are the serfs. The users are IT's CUSTOMERS what they need to do their business functions takes precedence over IT's need to pamper their ego.
How does one determine if one is ahead or behind of one's competitors?
"Welcome to Cogswell Cogs! How may I help you?"
"Hi, I'm from Spacely Sprokets, and I'd like to look at your IT shop!"
"Security!"
"Welcome to Cogswell Cogs! How may I help you?"
"Hi, I'm from Spacely Sprokets, and I'd like to look at your IT shop!"
"Security!"
If your business is suffering from many of these then I would firstly attend to improving the IT governance ie. getting your own house in -order; as without effective IT governance you will be spending money without any real idea as to whether it will actually deliver any benefit to the business.
Secondly, IT needs to urgently talk to the business; as either the business is happy with what it has got or it just hasn't bothered to tell IT about all the stuff it's done to workaround/avoid IT. In either case to move things forward, you are likely to have some substantial issues around the contribution and role of IT (and the IT department) in the business and effecting change (in both the business and IT) to deal with, before you can get down to talking about specific technology refresh and IT-enabled business change programmes.
Aside: With respect to the desktop, without specific business needs/demands, practically the only reason to upgrade from XP/Office 2003 to Win7/Office 2010 is to ensure you continue to receive mainstream support from Microsoft on critical desktop software and to take advantage of software you've already paid for (if if you have a Volume License agreement). With business involvement, the upgrade provides the opportunity to deliver so much more (namely IT-enabled business change) ...
Secondly, IT needs to urgently talk to the business; as either the business is happy with what it has got or it just hasn't bothered to tell IT about all the stuff it's done to workaround/avoid IT. In either case to move things forward, you are likely to have some substantial issues around the contribution and role of IT (and the IT department) in the business and effecting change (in both the business and IT) to deal with, before you can get down to talking about specific technology refresh and IT-enabled business change programmes.
Aside: With respect to the desktop, without specific business needs/demands, practically the only reason to upgrade from XP/Office 2003 to Win7/Office 2010 is to ensure you continue to receive mainstream support from Microsoft on critical desktop software and to take advantage of software you've already paid for (if if you have a Volume License agreement). With business involvement, the upgrade provides the opportunity to deliver so much more (namely IT-enabled business change) ...
the problem with bellrm's approach is that this approach does not apply the structure of the mainly useless but often goodselling "become successful in x easy steps" collections 
Outsourced IT departments have no 'loyalty' to the companies' sites where they work. Why should they? Any day they could be replaced with even lower priced temps.
Several friends worked at a large multinational corp., some for 20 years. They were pretty much experts in their areas, had all the certifications, excellent performance, cost too much. Most of IT was fired except for the manager [didn't know anything about IT], then were brought back as permatemps with no benefits. Quality perfomance doesn't matter. The company lost their best security techs, but the bottom liners won, even where the company lost.
Another friend worked as a Cisco engineer since the beginning of Cisco's entry into networking. New manager noted that even though she knew more and could do more than anyone else there, she didn't have CCIE certification because it didn't exist when she learned the system. Company wouldn't pay her for her level of work, so she asked to take the tests. Company wouldn't pay for the expensive tests that they paid for newer techs. She transferred laterally to the travel and marketing department for more pay, less work. This costs the company more to hire a new tech with certification, and 'break in' a new employee, instead of staying with an exceptional employee who they refused provide certification. Stupid.
Maybe IT managers need to know technology. Most places where I've worked, they don't.
Several friends worked at a large multinational corp., some for 20 years. They were pretty much experts in their areas, had all the certifications, excellent performance, cost too much. Most of IT was fired except for the manager [didn't know anything about IT], then were brought back as permatemps with no benefits. Quality perfomance doesn't matter. The company lost their best security techs, but the bottom liners won, even where the company lost.
Another friend worked as a Cisco engineer since the beginning of Cisco's entry into networking. New manager noted that even though she knew more and could do more than anyone else there, she didn't have CCIE certification because it didn't exist when she learned the system. Company wouldn't pay her for her level of work, so she asked to take the tests. Company wouldn't pay for the expensive tests that they paid for newer techs. She transferred laterally to the travel and marketing department for more pay, less work. This costs the company more to hire a new tech with certification, and 'break in' a new employee, instead of staying with an exceptional employee who they refused provide certification. Stupid.
Maybe IT managers need to know technology. Most places where I've worked, they don't.
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