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How would you describe the atmosphere in your IT department?

The latest TechRepublic poll asks, "Which of the following best describes the atmosphere that predominates in your IT department?

- Totally committed to serving the users
- Obsessed with the company's technology as IT's territory
- Constantly trying to justify its existence
- Content but isolated from the rest of the organization"

How would you describe the atmosphere in your department and why? What would you like to change about the environment?

I am the sole Techie in my office. All of us support people are responsible to look after our respective offices.

I am dedicated to solving the sales people's stupid problems. Its not all bad, I got a great laugh out of one problem a few days ago. I was called in and told that the Internet is not working. We have LAN cables lying under the tables, plugged into ports. All the sales people have to do is pick one up and plug it into their laptops each morning.

In this case, two sales people had picked up two ends of the same cable and plugged it into their laptops. they were of course very bewildered when it didnt work ...

Lying, cheating, stealing, whining. Yep that about sums up my I.T. department these days!!!
OH well. I love the work and the folks that I serve in the company but as far as my inner department and working circle, it's bad.

I'm going to predict, with a sigh of sadness, that the positive nature of my response will be in the minority. I would be delighted to be wrong.

My department is in very good shape, and the overall mood is quite positive. The general feeling is that we have challenging work, a bit more of a workload than we'd like (average 60-65 hours weekly) but that's preferable to just filling time, and although we occasionally have to deal with rude and inconsiderate (internal) customers the majority of our customer base is pleasant and knowledgeable enough to deal with.

I have a combination of employees and long term contractors, and everyone feels like an equal team member. We have a flat organizational structure and make no distinctions on the basis of employment status or place in the hierarchy. Decision making is owned by me but is conducted in a collaborative fashion...the feeling is that no decisions are forced on the team, that the team gets sufficient input such that even when decisions are made in opposition to their recommendations there's enough consideration of their positions that it's OK.

This is a federal government agency and as such no one here is getting wealthy, but no one feels their compensation or benefit package is unfair or too low.

I'm not saying it's perfect, and I'm not kidding myself that everyone thinks the environment and the management style is peaches and cream. There's a great deal of formal and informal communication between all of us, and we all have a fairly obvious personal and professional regard for each other such that if there were any burning issues (some do occasionally come up) we'd know about them and deal with them.

... but that is why we like reading your material so much.

Heck, if I wasn't going home every night and spending 8 hours an evening on opening my own business, I'd ask if you were hiring.

See this thread.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11181-0.html?forumID=6&threadID=187784&start=0

Job's still open.

I'm amazed that the position is still open, given that you are willing to punt on the educational requirements. How'd you get HR to letyou do that without a fuss?

Technically, the position is actually re-opened, not still open. I'd made an offer to someone who as it turns out was using me to leverage a counter from his current organization. Even after all these years and all this grey hair, which I must admit I do prefer to the flesh colored variety, I still get fooled.

I didn't ask HR if I could ignore the educational requirements, I just told them that's what I'm doing. I'm the beneficiary of a solid hiring track record and an HR Director who trusts my judgement more than his own when it comes to evaluating professional qualifications of candidates for jobs in my area of expertise. As I said in my first post, I'm in an environment where we have a personal and professional regard for one another, and I work very hard to maintain that type of relationship with my colleagues in departments outside IT.

I'm told the pendulum has swung back and forth here (where I am contracting), largely due to the history of the company. One of the founders started out and an oil wildcatter, and a lot of management maintains that POV.

There is a whole HR process, vast amounts of which can be neatly avoided by checking one box on a personnel request. When checked, the ad gets placed, but all the resumes get immediately cc'd to the requestor.

On the downside, HR will add whatever requirements they thing appropriate to the ad, thereby scaring away good candidates.
For instance, for the longest time we needed a wrapper developer with WISE and Install Shield experience. HR saw the D-word and tacked on a BS in computer science, every programming language known to man and a restaurant-sized can of alphabet soup to the ad.

Took a while, but we finally found someone who had the skillset we actually needed.

We respect and work together amazingly.

With only 2 PC Specialists doing levels 1-4 support handling almost 550 internal clients AND the only jobs posted are for programmers and project managers!! I USED to have a boss who was the only boss I have ever had in my career that I could say "I love my boss" and they "eliminated" his position! The General Manager of IT thinks anyone can be taken off the street and, with enough experience, trained to be a good support person. Our new boss will change a VPN group password and never say a word to us until we are stomped with calls from the mobile sales force. NOT GOOD! I used to love my job but the new management has turned this department into a social clique and "we ain't invited!"....nothing but anohter laborer (who happens to have a college degree and certification).

It seem no matter how many ours a week I spend on repairs, upgrades, or just getting stuff working again, I see my list gets longer every day.

We have a small network domain/exchange server, Data server, 7 data collection stations, 17 workstations.

The problem is I am the only one here who can keep this running and my main (day) responsibility is cad/work and programming production equipment. Then at night or weekends when people go home I have to come in to do the important (or critical) stuff.

As for a rating (60~70) on organization and up keep.

I would describe my shop as a cess pool of boredom and stupidity with an ex-Navy, OCD, lesbian for a manager that would, if she could verify that if you took a dump it was done per procedure.

This week, an exciting week, I get to hand-craft a 800mhz Dell Precision 420MT. Yes, hand-craft. I say that because each system gets rebuilt, from CDs, by hand, per paper procedure each time. No renaming (it "gets confused"), no imaging, no sys diffs...we dont trust them.

About 1 to 1.5days to reload all the junk onto this p-o-c.

Then I get "we need to test your skills, we need to go to active directory (we are an NT 4 domain), but we have no money and dont want to make any changes. Think you can do it?" Or the ever popular "we need to do penetration testing on the perimeter and verify that the enterprise is secure" (oh, such big words) OK. how are we going to do that. "I dont know, that is your job, but it cant cost money and you have to you Windows. We are a Windows shop and too small to support multiple operating systems." Yeah, good luck with that...

... I might re-image this thing I'm using (Ghostcast server, gigabit pipe) this afternoon. Might take 2 hours, since I have to d/l a couple highly tweaked VMWare images ...

We are moving cubicles around hard on the heels of a complete reorganization.

ALready noted: QA was totally forgotten in the cube-world re-shuffle. We may be doing our work from the picnic table outside during the next snowstorm.

Watch your back, cover your ass, and pass the buck!

There are people here who, if they said "Hello", I'd respond with "Liar!"

What do you think the root cause of the problems are? Poor management, not enough management, bad hiring?

The air in here is really nasty...ok enough of THAT kind of atmosphere. The coworkers are great, the management very responsive, the budget is pretty darn good. It is like the way that HP used to be years ago when the founders still ran it. It is a local gov't and nearly everyone is really easy to work with. Only one or two users that are evil, but the other 99% are just fine. Really good place to work.

always stress with phone calls asking "mr knows how"

But if only to choose from the 4 given then it would be: Totally committed to serving the users.

As I stated that none of the 4 given possibilities is the right one the question may rise what then. As all of the ICT employees are doing the best they can to support the company (although it is government we like to see ourselves (and are seen) as a company delivering service and products to the public/tax-payers)
with the services they like and are necessary to obtain a secure and reliable automated system, there always comes up the question why. Why is it that expensive, why does it take so long, why should they be involved, why do you need, ? etc.

This why question is merely an expression of what the internal client can?t see or knows what it will take to get things done as they like it to be done. As/Although this is more a question on communication it will bring in the doubt if the ICT department is right connected to the company and is not running off to the more sophisticated technological part of ICT for ICT?s sake, as techies do do sometimes.
The answer to these problems is already given in the statement as it is a question of communicating the right way. And, too add to it, on an open way on the why of the things being as they are given company/governmental rules (laws) and letting in the (internal) customer on decidings on questions rising as a project evolves within these rules.

Rob

I think isolation is the root of 3 of the four samples, and decentralization may be the best path towards "Totally committed to serving the users".

I would suggest eliminating the IT department and have each business unit provide IT support personnel, at least one per floor. The idea is to encourage personal interaction and let the IT staff member become the go-to guy for all computer related issues. The business staff should not have to "learn enough IT not to embarass themselves", rather they need to have a friendly face who can help them out without smirking behind closed doors. Likewise, the business staff is much more likely to believe that the person they see every day understands what they are doing and makes the business staff more likely to accept the IT staffer's advice, even if it creates some added difficulty.

I see a growing divide between the business and IT staff. By eliminating the face-to-face contact, IT staffing becomes just a question of cost efficiency leading to out-sourcing and off-shoring. I think much of the cost savings, however, are illusions, as the amount of informal IT work taken on by the business staff increases.

Wayne -- You bring up a good point and I think a lot of companies are grappling with this right now. There are a lot of benefits to decentralization of IT services - first and foremost you can can bring development and IT support a lot closer to the needs of the business unit. Of course, you can also end up with redundancies and duplication of effort.

What do you think are some of the pros and cons of the two approaches?

We've looked at this from another viewpoint. The company I contract at has 1500 people on campus, and maybe 50-60 in lab and 5 or so in IT who honestly have to be HERE. Everyone else could be issued a laptop (heck most of them have been issued a laptop) and work at the end of a pair of phone lines (one for voice, one for dial-up to a local ISP). DSL and cable would be all the better, but really not necessary.

At least the last IT department reorg did away with the layer of managers who just watched other people work ...

Meaning that management of IT (services) is centralized while the information management (IM) is decentralized and close to business with a central IM manager to conduct optimisation of ICT investments.

Rob

Centralization is a common approach covering more than IT support. Software development, QA, CM, QC/IV&V, and project management are heading in this direction as well.

Centralization can reduce staffing size because it is easier to share people and avoiding the "half-person" problem (Site A needs 1 1/2 people, site B needs 1 1/2 people, etc). Centralization also allows for much more technical specialization. Having IT support distributed requires generalization; someone who can handle any type of problem.

The efficiency for IT support achieved through centralization, however, creates a bottleneck. Remember, almost every IT support call is an indication that a business function is on hold. Instead of having IT staff idle while waiting for problems to occur, we have business staff idle waiting for problems to be resolved.

When IT staff are valued based on specialized technical knowledge, they are at risk when technnology turns over every 5 - 10 years. In this environment, one's skill set is periodically reset from expert to amature status and if one is valued based on technical expertise, it is hard to justify paying that level for the same person to learn the ropes in a new technology.

Lastly, I feel IT service quality suffers when done remotely. A vast majority of the "stupid user" issues described in various places in TechRepublic and other sources are really communications failings by trying to do the work over the telephone or by e-mail. What might be resolved in less than a minute by someone present can degrade into an excercise of frustration and embarrassment when done remotely.

Centralization values technical specialization and business knowledge generalization while decentralization values technical generalization and business knowledge specialization.

That's why we have the split on ICT-information management(decentral, with a central, high level, linking pin), what is business driven, and ICT-technology (central, with decentral low level co-workers), what is technology driven.

Special the staff-effectiveness was a prominent issue on this decision as was communication on user-level issues.

Rob

been through both twice!
De-centralised tends to be more customer friendly, possibly too customer friendly (reactive)
Centralised more effective in terms of efficiency at the cost of isolation from the business.
Reactive can be handled by stronger local management, isolation from the business that you are meant to be supporting though, hard to get round when the cost saving mentality is in charge.

Never understood it me, 175 guys and $50,000,000 worth of plant sat idle because you wanted to shave ?50,000 off your salary bill.

And they say techs can't see the big business picture.

I did support and development on a manufacturing plant. Four electicians with some IT skills on shifts and me on days doing IT and support.
Between us we increased up time on the critical support systems by 25%.

Does saving a few bucks in salary make sense if you compare it to to 175 blokes and a ?50,000,000 plant sitting idle. No.

Didn't stop the re-centralisation after the next round of musical chairs in management though. They saved my salary as well, I left. Don't like working for idiots.

Got to make your mark some how. Just point out the figures you improved, ignore the ones that suggest your screwed up big style.

Frustration is but one emotion and it is necessary for the individual to realize they are not all knowing. IT is a support mechanism and in 26 years of being on both sides of the business fence IT is the only side that has no idea what pasture it is in. IT has been to my mind 50 percent head strong, 25 percent arrogrant and 25 percent helpful. Sorry for the objective numbers but I did say, " to my mind".

The business unit has been at odds as to how to manage IT. I could tell you stories, one after another regarding IT and it's approach to businesses requests and demands. In the end isolation, integration, and outsourcing has lead to nothing more than the same divide between business and IT. What's the answer?, Patience on the part of business and metrics on the part of IT. Business needs to take enough time to ask and answer all of the questions IT has and IT needs to answer all of the questions business has AND quantify it all. Even with the perfect blending of IT and Business it may always be like the marriage between to great lovers, even they have spats but in the end they always get back to gether.

The corporation is sensibly run by good people who have a long-term perspective rather than focusing on the next quarter's P&L statement. This trickles all the way down.

Salaries are not above average yet everybody is content, which proves that life really is not all about money. Turnover is low, we have people with 40-year pins and people in their 70s who don't see the point in retiring. Overtime is not unreasonable.

As for IT itself, what's important to our end users is that software is delivered on time and that it fulfils their requirements, and that's what they get. Cost is secondary, since the impact of one production failure (lost business opportunity, customer goodwill, regulatory compliance) could be equal to a significant fraction of the IT department's annual budget. Yet the delivery rate statistics we have recently begun to compile are quite reasonable.

We stay off the leading edge of technology because that's not a safe or profitable place to be. But we are earnestly improving our processes and take the CMM(I) seriously. We plan, estimate, measure, and feed back.

Everybody finds something to complain about at the office, it's just human nature. But I hear more complaints about inadequate parking than inadequate management.

Our, subsidiary company, IT department received the final word from our corporate, parent, office - outsourcing IT within 4 months. Moral went from high to an all time low. The brass, top management, is meeting with each individual to determine their last day. Ultimately each person will be given a 30 days notice or an end date beyond 30 days. Here are the employee options - a few will be asked to stay and see the transition through (small number). A few maybe (low number) employed by the homeland outsourcing company. The remaining majority will be asked to pack your bags.

Never thought IT moral could sink to this low.

I was in Company A and IT had it's share of problems, though overall it was in a good state with a very good core team. We achieved the most possible with limited resources.

Company A was bought by Company J, now IT is run from the other coast. 50% of the core team moved on to greener pastures and have not been replaced. The remaining core team from A has been split into 3 different areas. The mantra from Company J is "Move fast". I have found that now it does not matter what direction you are moving in as long as it's fast. They move so fast that they make mistakes and projects take longer than expected now.

_

I cant say that my job is perfect, far from it. But i still wake up every morning (after i get into the office and have my first cup of coffee) with a happy face on.

Its sad to see that many of the people here dont like either their job, boss, co-workers, clients or just people in general. Im sure most people came into the industry looking to do the thing they love and get paid for it, but instead have to put up with all of the bs that goes with it.

Hearing all of these stories makes me gald that i enjoy my job, get along with my boss and co-workers and dont have too many troubles with day to day life.

The pay could be better, plus if the director wasnt such a tight arse, but after reading throught a few of your stores, i realise that i probably wouldnt want to be anywhere else.

If your work life is enjoyable, post a message. Its depressing to see that most of the people here are posting negative responses.

My company has between 250 - 300 employees and has doubled in size in the last five or six years. There is IT staff for position but only ONE of everyone so if we lose staff (currently no UNIX SYS ADMIN in Chicago... anyone?) there is a lag in productivity. Also, because many of us wear multiple hats, projects are sometimes delayed in terms of delivery because of too many concurrent deliverables.

Not a place where management never listens and employees are frustrated and stressed to the point of hardly caring what happens.

Is this possible? Want to know how to create such a workplace?

Best regards, Ben Simonton
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed" http://www.bensimonton.com

As the sole manager of the Help Desk/IT Dept I am it. My attitude is one of service to the end user but that does not mean I drop everything and run when I see a ticket. I prioritize the issue and do my best to solve the problem.

In any case, it's the only thing that still keeps me in this ****** profession. Guess I could describe it as "professional".

We are totally isolated from the rest of the organization, with lots of management layers in between. All requests from administrative part of the organization must go through their chain of command up, and then our chain of command down. A bit old fashioned, not as efficient as it might be, but IMHE, it's the best way to do things in IT on the long run.

Still, business goals come first, technology second. What's new, what's hot, what's fashionable is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how to get the things done most efficiently.