Bosses just don't get IT

One idea might be to introduce an internal Key Performance Indicator for your department.You sit down with your Superiors and suggest that you measure for example the number of issues you receive each month and the resolution time it took to sort each issue out.If you have a help desk system then you could do it on a ticket by ticket basis.If you are as quick at resolving issues as you say you are then the figures you produce will show management just how efficient you are.It will also help you broadcast to others the volume of work you have.

Have them build you a lab - with locking door - then go in - surf - and sleep ... all they know is your in your magic room working on PC's

The key is educating them. If they are normal managers, they do not have a clue what you do, when you are not fixing problems. My goal is to spend more time on the proactive side, making sure the tickets do not get opened. schedule presentations on what you do that makes this valuable to them. Evaluating technology for fit in your business environment is valuable. Applying security patches, service packs is valuable.

We are about twice the size of your company with nearly 100 employees on our payroll.

My (IT) department had 6 people in the first half of the year, in 3 weeks we will be down to 3 people including myself -- the department "pseudo" manager is leaving. She was tapped on the shoulder and dubbed manager when the VP of MIS left us last September -- she never wanted the job, she's not a manager she's a developer.

Anyway, I'm the sole one responsible for our corporate network, I can get help on the more simple things from my fellow department mates but when it comes to network management, configuring switches, routers, etc...there is only me.

I'm also the one filling the unofficial role of "lead support tech".

Let's face it in a 100 person company you will have some downtime with no support requests coming in. Hey its worse here if you think your situation is bad, we are in our worse billing year in company history, they are laying people off left and right.

So what I do when the support jobs don't come in...I put my R&D hat on and test out new technologies, servers, processes, software (new to our company, not necessarily new as in *NEW*..lol). For instance right now I'm working on Windows Server 2003, which we are planning on bringing in-house over the next 6-10 months. I set up a test box in our server room, we have the MSDN subscription so I use those copies of the software to "play" with new apps.

Along with that I'll read up on anything related to my job or something that may have value for increasing efficiency, lowering costs, etc.

Another idea is identify what problems your users have. What are recurring issues or issues that you know several people have related to your performance or technical problems?

Address those issues, talk to folks with these problems (everyone is approachable just find the right time when they aren't overly busy).

We have users who are of the lower skill set when it comes to computers --- they were frustrated by using all the features of Outlook. So one day in my "downtime" I created a "quick reference" guide to Outlook with screenshots and step by step instructions. That little document earned me brownie points by the majority.

So remember the key point is stay useful to your company and be creative and then even in slow periods your bosses won't think you aren't worth your salary.

You need to look busy.

Even if you are surfing TR or other web sites, you need to maintain a serious business look on your face.

Choose a few "pet" projects that you would like to spend some time on, and have at least 1 set up to be worked on at all times.

Chas

Well, thanks for all the input. Couldn't have helped me out at a better time. Just had a meeting with one of our directors about my position. I'm getting my own lab/office now.

I'm putting together a list of what I expect my daily, weekly, monthly tasks, and ad hoc tasks to be, so they can gauge how much work I actually do. As well as longer term projects, such as setting up a company intranet on the new server, etc. This is to keep them happy that I do have some work when times are quietly running smoothly.

I suspect I had someone else high up drop some good words for me and explain my , cos all of a sudden they're showing a small interest in what I do.

I have worked in various roles as an IT Manager/ Admin for many years now. If you have nothing to do, try putting together an IT strategy discussion document for your boss, come up with suggestions for new systems / solutions, conduct a mini-audit and make sure all your licensing is in line where it should be... Run some security tests on the server, dude - the list is endless. I have never come across a time in IT where I haven't had a long list of "Would be nice to do when time allows" sitting in my task list.

Your bosses want things to run smoothly and for you to be on
top of everything that might go wrong. By being so efficient you
have managed to free up time within your working day to
browse IT sites proactively looking for breaking issues to enable
you to anticipate problems before they even appear. If you
adopted the KPI approach suggested in the first reply, and
include in it the value of the user community you have access to
as a consequence of your browsing, you will give your bosses a
better picture of your contribution.

Some of the comments here are exactly right. You should be spending 30% of your time researching and educating. Cite the constant changes in the IT world as why you need to be keeping yourself up to date and ever vigilant for new threats and risks. Good luck. I had a similar issue in my last IT role, and this was how I got around it.

Hi

I look at IT improvements. We cant simply fix/install PC's all day. It's childs play... & boring. Besides, thats what Ghost & RIS are for :D.
I usually have a number of projects that I will be working on in my "free from support" time. This might include a new corporate wallpaper, screensaver, intranet section etc etc. Also, we always have something in the server event logs thats worth investigating.

Regards
Aaron
Network Admin.

I've seen enough examples of this and thought enough about this to have arrived at a few conclusion as follows:
If you have a boss with this perception of you then the most likely reasons are some or all of the following:
1. Your boss is not an IT person and does not understand what it is that an IT Professional does or needs to do within your particular organisation and ultimately does not understand their own responsibilities as an IT Manager.
2. Your boss is a dilbert like Manager who does not know how you spend your time and is unable or incapable of drafting any sort of work / training plan.
3. You are so good at your job and efficient you do tasks that take other people days or weeks in a matter of hours and never have to revisit the problem(s). So, having made what others call "difficult problems" disappear without apparent effort the [dilbert] manager starts to think that everything you do is trivial ?
4. You "are" a bludger and have a manager that does not deal with it effectively.
5. You work in an Organisation that does not have a detailed IT Strategy (Not uncommon) that includes Support, training, Performance Optimisation, security auditing, Virus and Patch Management, incident response, Backup & Recovery Planning/testing etc etc.

There are different solutions to each of the issues all of which can boost your career if handled correctly or destroy it if botched. Remember, the art of Managing a Manager is how to make the Manager look good whilst still getting the recognition deserved !

These are my thoughts.

You are right about that but then you might become the electrician of the company.

When the fridge goes down, who has the screwdrivers? The IT person! call him, he knows more that what others do...

And then you become the person for all screwdriver related problems.

I wouldn't like that. Do you?

Well... of course you should first make this exercize yourself...!

Assuming you have passed this exam you might want to see the bluff or you would risk otherwise to be kept forever hanging: to do this you first have to double check all your cards, though: namely you should be confortable with the ideas that:

1) The company would be worse without you in your position - first
2) No resource cheaper than you may be quickly relocated or hired to take your post for any reason, and
3) MOST IMPORTANT: there is ANY other position you could take in your company - better if non-IT - that you could be fit well in - this latter provision would save you from having to fight in a lose-lose battle with your company on who loses most between you and the company - perhaps, in fact, few companies would have enough "bad energy" to say to you in sequence:
a) You are useless in your post
b) You are useless altogether!

At least that is my hope as I am preparing for this dialogue myself should my boss reitirate his request of justifying my job to the higher management.

Good luck, Fabrizio

Had this problem last week when I literally walked out of my appraisal interview. I asked my non-IT managers to review what I had achieved this year. (I had given them a weekly timesheet log so this was a reasonable request.) Resheduled the appraisal for Friday and what a different story. They realised what a difference my input had made to their busy lives. Can I do more of the same please? Sure!

I recommend "Take Back Your Life" by Sally McGhee (Productivity Consultant who specialises in Microsoft Outlook). Every task has to relate to your main objectives and be treated accordingly. If you can show this relationship then you have won. You can demonstate that you are achieving.

The issue goes far beyond IT. The reason why most technical people are hired isto have the capacity to deal with problems as they come up, not to fill up their days with menial tasks. Bosses make the same mistake everywhere. How many times do a bunch of people wait in line for 1 cashier because the others are somewhere else, like stacking the shelves or emptying boxes. Only when someone notices the line that a call is made for a cahier to drop everything else and open 2nd or 3rd cash register. But the customers notice and may never return.

Most jobs are to do complex jobs quickly and well ASAP. But a tired or distacted employee can't use maximum skill and brains to resolve the crisis when they have to leave behind an unfinished boring task to do so. And they know that the unfinished task is stil waiting. So does anything get done well, with full concentration? Absolutely not. So people slow down their major task and the system may be up in 4 hours instead of 3 hours.
And when someone calls about a minor or trivial matter, your day quickly gets filled up and, then when the crisis happens, it goes to the bottom of the line.

And then people demand more resources to do IT in a timely way. No wonder our productivity drops and companies get in trouble. The hardest thing on a project is to wait for someone else to give you needed information because they fell they can't spare the 10 minutes you need. Managers get tied in endless meetings to measure progress. If you are in a meeting, who is managing and guiding your staff.
Same thing in IT. Learning from others or reading new articles means you are upgrading your skills for when the crisis hits. But ansering the phone while typing a complex report can mean the report is days late, if the number of calls breaks your concentration on typing or data entry.
Electrical workers can restore power quicker the sooner they get there. But they may only get there late because they were doing routine naintenace on some minor part and need their boss's permission to leave.

This is a problem that is going on everywhere,not just the IT Industry.There seems to be an ideology out there that goes"I Pay you X Number of Dollars and I expect to get every penny's worth out of you" Unfortunately most of the types of bosses that you describe will ususally only have a cursory knowledge of IT or COmputers at all and as a result "and partly because most ITs make it look easy", they will feel that since the system seems to be running all right for now, you should be kept busy so as to earn your keep,"so to speak".What they fail to understand is that the very reason that the system is working so well is exactly because of you and the the approach that you are taking. You are keeping the system "tickety Boo!!" and making sure that you personally are up to Specs in what is going on in the IT world.I would suggest that the next time a break down occurs"And it will" Just be a little slower in repairing it and not quite so quick to jump in and help when someone else get's into the soup.When you're asked why it's taking so long, just tell them you want to make sure they get their money's worth of expertise. After a few of these, they may just come to realise your worth and allow you to proceed as you chose best.I would also strongly suggest that you keep a log of all your activities including those of checking out new techniques and ideas and then you'll be in a position to justify your time the next time your questioned.Always keep a log,it's the only real defense you have against people who don't know what you do or how well you do it and why.Especially when they are the ones paying you.
Good Luck
AaB

One of the things you should already be doing and could use to your advantage is documentation. I use help desk software (lots of cool freeware stuff out there) and a desk log to keep track of my time. I assume you have a job description, there is also a checklist available from the downloads section here that is a things to do list based on member input. Use these things to create your own things to do list. Two things will happen: first, you will be able to show what it is you are doing all day. Second, you will find that your slack time diminishes. I have been doing this stuff for 20 years, several times in the same situation as you. I have always been able to find something to keep me busy.

One thing that you may want to consider is that your employer may not know what it is you are supposed to be doing. I have found this to be true when I took job as a company's first IT person.

Finally, use this opportunity to your advantage. Develop your job, and create a department, not a position. I followed these steps and went from a one man show like yours to a three person department with myself (Admin), a programmer, and an A+ tech. I only had 75 users and 5 servers but was able to justify the extra people.

Cheers!

Hi Jinn,

I started my career as a computer tech, then worked my way into a network admin job at United Technologies, then at Motorola and finished off at IBM. All admins around the world have the same problem and management, or most people for that matter just don?t understand that an admin is exactly like having and paying for an insurance policy. My suggestion during down time, is to keep a low profile ? in otherwords don?t be seen chatting and enjoying life ? use this time to learn ? say your studying. They still might not understand, but will at least recognize that you are improving yourself for their sake.

My name is Colin, I am currently an IT manager and also have a IT business, I have been in a similar position previously to where you are and it is very frustrating, I found by doing a mixture of the following helped.

1. Hold IT Meetings once a month, in these meetings discuss problems you have had and how you have over come them and any IT issues or questions that staff may have can approach you there but make sure that Directors etc are there so they can see what you do plus it will go for you on a CV.

2. I use my PC to connect to the servers and do a lot of repairs remotely maybe this is a solution for you and also explain and show your managers this so when you are sitting at the your computer they will understand and think that you are probably running updates through the server.

3. Setup a maintenance program on ALL hardware so every piece of hardware gets a service at least twice a year as this will keep you quite busy and if there is a situations that stops you that week just move it to another week which will keep you busy in the quiet periods.

Well I hope this helps.

Cheers

Colin

You may try explaining through your boss that while a fireman is very busy at a fire, they are busy between fires making sure that the equipment is ready and that they are trained in the latest firefighting techniques. Keep a spreadsheet of each activity with categories like "customer service","in-shop service","training/research",etc. This will show you and them how you spend your time.

For what you tell, your boss has the old administration point of view, you have to LOOK busy TO BE busy.
In the other hand, it is much better to administer your time measuring how much you reach your objectives, that is, no matter how much time it takes, the problem must be solved, no matter if it is at morning, afternoon or in the middle or the night, it must be solved. I think that is what you have to show to your boss.

Why not print up all the responses here and just leave them in the lunch area and restroom for the appropriate people to see (and any other good location)sometiumes people only get the idea if the see others getting it first. but just make sure they see that this (surfing) is a relivent part of your job and a critical part of their bussiness could suffer from you not being able to do these info searchs and if that don't work then I have to go with the building of a lab idea. (what they don't see can't hurt them)

I lost a job from a large company for this very same reason. However, prior to being laid off I had started to institute a problem tracking database to show the work I had been doing and keep track of longer term projects, etc.

The BEST thing to do to prevent problems with people that don't understand IT work is a thing of ebb and flow is to find a way to show them how much work you really do get done during the 'flow' times, and to also show what you are doing to help them 'project-wise' during the 'ebb' times ...

Your bosses knowledge depends on what you communicate to him. He needs to understand the nature of your job, that you're doing PM, that you're updating your skills, etc. He needs to understand well enough to account to his boss. Maybe you should send him an email every week with your accomplishments listed, including PM and updating your knowledge. It might even account for over 8 hours a day. We all spend a lot of our own time keeping our skills up to date.
Jeff Levitan, technical writer

Don't feel bad - life is just like that. Some
people understand how the support role works and
some never get it. Over 30+ years seen this same
many, many times and seen corporations to react
wrong way AND later on paying a lot ( some too
much to contiunue - another story ). You have to
remember that you ( and I ) propably think the
best for company - middle management %99 thinks
only their own benefits, how to look good. How
else they can say "I need more head count" and
that's unfortunatelly how the importance of a
manager is counted, not the work they get done. I
don't ( any more ) that you or I can change that,
it must be changed from up - see what I mean..

I generally aviod being seen by my boss like the plague unless I have to. However I have a trick that I employ. Whenever I fix a problem I encourage the employee whose computer that I just fixed to make a comment to the boss like "your IT Dept. is very efficient" or something like that. That way I've become like air... invisible but you know that I'm there.

Skill building, research for future deployments, knowledge expansion are all paramount to the IT department. If not done network down time maybe impacted. Communicating that to your employers may be difficult but hopefully possible. There are numerous articles that may be of help dealing with Disaster Recovery, increased threats (external & internal) and treads in the industry. Many of those found right here at TechRepublic.
I am fortunate that our CEO attends a monthly meeting with other CEOs (sort of a support group for CEOs, since no one understands what a CEO goes through execpt another CEO). This group is mentored by a successful retired CEO who said, in the context of delegating supervisory authority for departments, "Leave the IT department alone." This is, of course, with the understanding that you've hired someone you trust and the fact that IT personnel, as a rule, are doing a job they WANT to do. That is why many of us will spend our own time and resources to continue doing what we like. If you can get that communicated your job will be very enjoyable and a platform for increasing your job skills.

This might not be a popular opinion, but this is how I see it:

Up to a point, IT should stay busy as there's always things that need to be done.

If users have any kind of autonomy regarding internet and email use, there will be a need to scan for viruses and spyware, test and apply Windows Updates (even with SUS and WUS, there's a need to sync and update the servers), update antivirus definitions, clean out and reseat expansion cards on the client PCs, test older equipment that's not currently in-use...

Let's assume that all PM-type stuff is completed. You could use your spare time to further your education. The internet is a great source for IT-related info. Learn more about your clients' various software, teach yourself how to use a new operating system, prepare for IT certifications such as A+ and MCSE...use spare time learning something new that would be of use to your company.

I've started building PCs from leftover parts from outdated systems and have been selling them to employees and their families really cheap, and then I take the proceeds and apply it to the IT dept. budget. Not only is it good PR but it also puts money back into the budget. You could also look into donating older equipment to schools and your co. would probably get a tax write-off for it.

My experience has shown me that anytime you can make money for your company management notices and appreciates it.

The important thing is to show management that you're not just sitting there watching the clock. Communicate to others what you're doing. There's no reason that times between "putting out fires" cannot be productive...it just takes some discipline and creative thinking.

IT support positions are similar in demand structure to any emergency response group (think firefighters.) There appears to be quite a bit of "down time", but in reality the maintenance aspects of the job, whether its hardware or knowledge, are less exciting than than putting out the fires. Ironically, those maintenance activities are essential to enabling the more visible activities. Tell them someone needs to spend time stocking the library or there won't be any books to loan. Unfortunately, other positions around the company, usually have a more predictable schedule and even flow. Your web surfing will be viewed by most others as goofing off. When it comes to work related activities, everyone wants to get away with whatever they percieve as the lowest calorie burn for the buck.

Keeping track of your projects, workload, and ESPECIALLY those taskings that become labor intensive because the folks asking for them don't know what they want are critical.
I had an MIS director that was looking for me to be occupied 8 hours a day and couldn't understand that I couldn't just bump users at random to PM their systems. I ended up scheduling about three systems a day to clean up temp files, make adjustments to the software preferences for the user and generally tune-up for performance. This was especially critical since they were STILL using P-75 systems running Win95 As I was doing the necessary I was automating the procedures to run monthly/weekly as needed...
Preparing documentation of the procedures, setting standards, and generally doing his job for him created an environment that was comfortable since the metric was there to show that I was doing the job.... the only reason I left was the job shrinking to nothing more than moving equipment...no continuing training, or even real challenges for that matter...
Once I had all the systems setup to do the PM procedures automatically and document them to the network I was cleaning keyboards and mice to look busy... with only 10% of the job having to do with networking or administration it was pretty much intern level work... nice pay grade, but boreing!
It's not just the technically challenged that will demand that emergencies be scheduled in between their routine requirements. Right now, when the 800 number rings I'm a consultant, if it doesn't - I'm retired... much more comfortable job

I am the ONLY tech of ANY kind in a 200+ employee company that covers 7 south Texas counties. When I am working in ONE of many offices, all the people that cannot find me assume that I am not working. So most days 1 person thinks I am working and 199+ think I am not.

I am always BUSY...but to fight the perception of the 199+ people who see me going to the ONE office, I carry TWO cell phones (1 company, 1 personal), I carry a large overstuffed briefcase, AND I walk VERY RAPIDLY to and from my car no matter WHERE I am going.

Why, if I carry two cell phones, do 199+ people NOT find me??? I have come to find that the people that can't find me don't WANT to find me...they WANT to be able to SAY that they could't get it done because they couldn't find me.

I can't fight this strategy other than to say that I was at a certain office on that day.

That aside, I go through my routine, I hit as many jobs as I can, I do my research, and when I see a user problem developing (that won't go away) I document.

I have developed a relationship with the CEO that allows me to talk to him when a particular user gets "too heavy". During those "talks", most of the time I can demonstrate that that particular user was late that morning because he/she could not tie their shoelaces and that normally suffices.

In summary, what I am trying to say is, do what is within your power to combat the negative image, do your job, have supreme confidence in your abilities, but DEFEND yourself.

A proverb says, "AYUDATE QUE YO TE AYUDARE".
Translations are difficult as each person interprets according to his/her experiences, but, to me, this roughly means, "Help yourself AND I will help you", or "Help yourself SO that I may help you", or other similar.

I have read here so many times that it is wrong or, at least, inappropriate, for a tech to even DARE dream that a user could be wrong or over-bearing...he IS the "customer" after all AND aren't they "always right?"

If YOU will NOT begin by, at least, defending (helping) yourself...how the heck can you EXPECT for someone ELSE to help YOU?????

Do your job...fight the perception...defend yourself...

An old LASER maintenance MasterSergent doing computers now because he couldn't find too many civilian companies dropping LASER guided bombs....

I am in charge of the Technology Dept in a similiar size company so I am probably like your bosses. As such, you will probably not like what I have to say.

There is always so much for us to do and so little time each day I cannot image any of us just sitting around 'waiting" for something to happen. When we are busy, we are very busy. When we are not busy (ie; waiting for software to load or a disk to format), we are still working on something.

Why not try working on more than one task at a time. Not only will you not have to "look busy" (because you will be), but you will be a more productive member of your IT Team and company and be recognized as such.

If you are not given small tasks to do to fill in your valleys, why not seek them out? There is always more you can do to help others within your organization and/or develop your own skill sets.

Jinn, after working in the IT industry for years, communicating effectively with management can certainly be challenging, especially when it?s IT related. I have found that it does help to document and account for everything you do, I mean everything. Whether it be preventive maintenance, follow-up, documentation, inventory, changing out backup tapes, time spent seeking cost-effective alternatives/solutions such as lowering the cost of printing cartridges etc. This may sound very simple, but you maybe defending why you are there and why they pay you what they do. Start by building your case and proving to them that they need having you around, by logging what you are accomplishing throughout the day. If you are dealing with critical related issues, document this, briefly mentioning the possible problems that could had resulted hadn?t this been addressed. Also, remember, if you assist someone with an IT issue, kindly ask them to offer some feedback to management about your response time, how you minimized downtime and overall the quality of your service. Take pride in what you do and convince them that they really do need you and it is a delight having you around.

rcc

I expect continuous improvement and study of the team when daily responsibilities wind down. It is all part of being prepared.

The managers of my generation learned their jobs at the end of the assembly line era, when people had to perform like robots. The line could only move as fast as the slowest worker. These dinosaurs have not been able to adapt to the post-industrial era, in which work does not occur in standard-size chunks like the hamburger patties in a fast food joint.

"Management" in the industrial era was really "supervision": nothing more than taking attendance and keeping an eye out for people who were trying to cheat the system.

Today, managers actually need to know how to manage -- and they DON'T! Perfect attendance, prompt return from breaks, and always being busy are no longer the measures of a good employee. We have to measure their RESULTS, not their TIME. And our brains are too calcified to be able to learn how to do that.

This is why the highly successful telecommuting experiments of the early 1990s were quietly discontinued. Even though most employees were quite capable of doing their jobs at home, their managers were incapable of managing workers whom they couldn't spy on. Imagine how much more neurotic your boss would become if he couldn't SEE you! He doesn't care what you DO, his opinion of you is based entirely upon enjoying your obedient servitude!

All you can do is remember this and make an unbreakable vow: When you finally become a manager, you will be wiser than these guys. You will learn how to manage results rather than busy-ness.

When the new generation of workers comes into power -- people who have been using IM and webcams since they were old enough to click a mouse -- management styles will abruptly change. A nice byproduct will be a telecommuting revolution, which will cut the country's petroleum consumption by about 80 percent and make a military occupation of the entire Middle East unnecessary.

I build/upgrade/maintain a workflow database and front end for the company I work for. My boss is always happy to see me sitting and staring at the wall or surfing IT web pages because he's clear on the fact that those are valid methods of working on my job. Most other employees, he'd be quite upset if they were tapping their fingers on their desk and apparently counting ceiling tiles.

If it's resolvable, it has to be through communication. Explain that "surfing IT sites" is how you keep your skills sharp, how you research solutions and how you learn how to prevent problems. Do those things honestly, communicate them clearly. Don't go surf e-Bay while on the clock, of course. Periodically let them know "hey, I just found an answer to one of our problems on this web site!" when you find such. Don't wait for them to ask, get excited when you find a solution, let people know how you found it. Do it honestly, but do it loudly (well, reasonably loudly), and pretty soon, in most situations, people will look at you surfing for IT data and understand that it's a good thing.

If, on the other hand, surfing sites like this isn't really improving your abilities in IT, isn't providing you with solutions/preventions, then don't do it during work hours. Find something that will increase your skills and let your boss(es) know that that's what you're doing. Most will be happy with that.

If, on the other hand, your boss is someone who only understands the physics definition of "work" (mass moved through space and time) and who doesn't get that research is a part of doing an IT job, and can't grasp that no matter how much you communicate it, you're out of luck.

Dust off your resume. You will never change the perceptions of the "higher ups". Find a place where they understand and appreciate you.

The best way to get any boss to understand what you do is to doument a day or two of your work. Better yet, document everything. When they complain, you have evidence. Putting it on paper makes all the difference.

I work in the IT department for a technical college. Five years ago, there were 5 people in the department doing everything from network support to programming positions. Today, there are 10 of us without any "new" responsibilities, including an Executive Director that sits on the President's cabinet, something we have never had before.

In our first college-wide meeting after the Executive Director came aboard, he gave a presentation on what IT did. This was mainly because employees were quite blunt in their views that we had doubled our staff and saw no tangible results from the hires. (Keep in mind we don't teach, or enroll students, or advise students, or process financial aid, etc.) Our Director compared us to an electric or telephone utility. When you pickup the phone or flip a light switch, you expect it to work. You assume the electric/telephone/water/whatever utility is doing things in the background to make its service more reliable (who hasn't experienced some type of outage), more efficient, replace aging equipment, etc. In all honesty, you *don't want* to see a technician; that means something is wrong!

When people turn their PC on and it works, they can connect to the network, print to printers, access network files, etc., you *are* doing your job. Have any viruses lately? Nope! You *are* doing your job. Have any mission critical apps/files unavailable/lost lately? Nope! You *are* doing your job. Management needs to understand that when you are working in their eyes, someone else probably isn't working.

Just wanted to give a slightly different perspective on the IT justification arguement.

Your situation is not uncommon, especially in small IT shops. The ideal situation is that IT employees who work in the "peaks and valleys" type jobs should have back burner IT tasks they can pick up on during the valley periods. I think the ideal type of activity for these periods is research into new technologies. You are probably already doing this to some extent while surfing, but organized and directed research is much more effective at bringing a return to the business as a number of employees can be working on different areas instead of individual employees drifting along their own areas of interest - with no reported results, and potentially duplication of effort with others.

At some point in time the company will grow just enough that your to-do list of smaller issues and upcoming projects will grow faster than you can work through it, but not so fast that the company can justify hiring someone else. That's where I'm at right now - my to-do list was big at 4 pages at the beginning of this year, and now it is 6 pages and counting.

It sounds like you're at a junior help desk level?

Managing perception is something your boss should be doing.

Here are some suggestions to make to him or her.

1. Reporting. Run a help desk software tracking solution and report on your work. We currently use Track-IT, but have a custom Access DB I threw together myself. Your boss should spring for a software solution.

2. Benchmark. Compare yourself to industry benchmarks. i.e. techs to staff rations, techs to server ratios, etc.

3. Keep busy. There's always something to do. Your boss needs to come up with a decent maintenance schedule to follow between fires. Your boss should also have you working on longer term projects between spikes. If I were your boss, and you continued to have the attitude that you deserved ?down time? between break-fix, I?d have to let you go. I personally won?t tolerate slackers on my team.

Since none of these are being done now, I'd venture a guess that the head of IT at your company is incompetent. You may end up becoming a scapegoat for their failure. If you can't get perception fixed, be prepared to abandon ship.

Perception means everything, even undeserved perception problems can get you fired.

You said this is a small company- how small? I am the sole IT support for our atlanta office, which has 75 employees, and I still get downtime. Because of the location of my desk, no one ever really knows what I am doing and I am forced to make myself personally accountable to myself. In your place, I would spend my time researching things. If you are constantly showing a commitment to improving your skills, you are increasing your ROI to your managers by educating yourself (avoiding most company-related expenses) and certainly making yourself worthy of greater compensation. It may also unintentionally let them know that you could have other options available. I'm not saying to sit around and read, but rather to branch out and experiment. You will appear busy, that's for sure! Also, if that is not an option, you could consider taking on additional responsibilities, such as managing the phone system, security system, or finding additional ways to increase collaboration within your company in the technical realm- for example learning about video teleconferencing for work with outside clients. Or, maybe you need to change employers- the way things are going, it sounds a bit radical, but if management thinks you are not "busy enough", you may be forced to pursue that option anyway. Good luck!

I utilize several system health check and monitoring utilities. I generate reports out of these platforms to give semi-daily status reports to the managers, and weekly to the directors. Even though this is a mostly automated process, it gives a snapshot of whats going on in the environment. I tend to give a bit more information than is absolutely necessary so as to clue them on the complexity of the task.

This practice does mean I am in a meeting explaining the actions taken and the ongoing research into the causial factors and fixes about once a week, but does keep them off of my back as I try to resolve ongoing issues.

Additionally, never sit with your screen viewable from behind, and always have a monitoring front end up.

We have about 45 employees and I am the sole admin. I take care of everything from desktop support to our routers, firewall, exchange server, ftp and website.

As you say, sometimes the workload is incredible and I have been know to be here 48 hours in a row, but sometimes the workload is not as bad.

I have made it a point to bring the following in every one of my employee review:
"If things are running smoothly, then that means I'm doing my job properly." I hammer this every time I have a review scheduled.

The other thing I do is get involved in all facets of work at my company. We are architects and this means that I've learned how to support autocad and I have autocad running on my desk 24-7.

But generally my bosses are very understanding and know that if the the exchange server, for example, hasn't gone down once in the three years I've been here then that means I'm doing my job. They just get it.

In closing, I also point out to them that by being on microsoft.com or techrepublic.com I am keeping my skills up to date and save them a ton of money by not having to go to school.

It's amazing how much you can accomplish with a little bit of communication.

If you're sitting there waiting for a disk format to complete, you really are "slacking off". Most IT staff perform multiple tasks at one time, otherwise we would keep up with the workload.

Hi Jinn,

Do a cost-benefit analysis of "when you are working to fix something and when your systems are running smoothly"...the more you systems are working smoothly...your case becomes stronger...becoz downtime is less... production is high...and then present it to your bosses

best Regards

I see alot of this type of whining out of so-called IT types that signifies they are truly "technicians". A utility type that is apt to be outsourced/off-shored to a cut-rate company that pays sub-standard rates with little or no benefits who employ only wrench types to go turn the screw when it is loose. This is a prime example.

It is better to perform as a professional that demonstrates self motivation and can establish tangible, definable "projects" and market those initiatives to the right people, gaining buy-in for improvements in the overall IT network infrastructure and service delivery. In this manner, you are not only building better relationships, but are performing something viewed as useful to the company. At the same time you build for yourself a better career and a better resume. The "defined projects" do not need to be big, or even have a tangible cost associated with it. They should, however, reflect tangible improvement and forward thinking.

Try patterning your work habits as a professional consultant even though you are company property. Outside professional consultants have to document and communicate their purpose, how they are doing it and status. It sounds as though there might be some need to improve communication as to what you are doing in slack times and how it is really benefiting the company.

If you can't come up with things to do to keep busy you probably are like most other admins and don't take the time to keep your documentation up to date. This is an admins biggest responsability but more often then not is mostly ignored. You have to think that someone else may need to know about your systems configurations, patch levels,etc. Your management will be grateful and you may find out more about your environment so that you won't have to be putting out fires as often.

I've never worked for a none-IT person that has any clue what we do for a living. Having said that: Step One, the way to protect yourself from these fools is to define a set of Service Levels that you and your supervisor can agree on. This helps you prove you actually do something for a living.

Second) You need to make sure you are working in a proactive manner as oppose to a re-active manner.

A very wise instructor of mine once stated, "An IT Administrator that is doing his job properly should be laying on the couch in his office watching TV". An explaination is in order, if you're doing your job right, everyone should be happily working away and you should have no problems to deal with. Problems cut into your couch time.

Stick with it, have a nice day. -spanky

Others have emphasized communication, you may want to sit down with your boss and find out if he/she would like a regular status report and how often. Or just do it. Keep a log of everything you do including research, preventative maintenance, etc. and report it. They may need to ask you to turn down the level of detail :-)

The other option is to do some thinking on where you need to go in terms of IT -- especially if you aren't getting the direction on this from above -- and start working on making it happen. For example, are you happy with the level of security you have? If not what's missing and what can get you there. Are you happy with the level of training people have on security or best practices for being a road warrior/remote access? Consider setting up a regular training for that.

Then communicate your plans and start implementing!

I thought your idea was phenomenal, so I went and tried it myself and by jolly did it work. I even got a raise!! Thanks

I am currently joggling the same things, but my bosses know that it is good to keep me around. I have found that if there are any questions about the websites that I visit, I just say that I am learning or researching a problem. In most cases this is true, but there are other things that I would say can help out as well. Often I assign small projects to myself and post them to my manager upon completion. Mainly these will fall into the documentation, automate or script something to make common tasks easier and faster, etc. Often they do not take that much time and if it gets busy, I can drop them quickly and come back to them another day.
Since things are getting done

The problem you describe can be tough. Show them the research you do is valuable.If you can help them see that your job is more than problem resolution, it will help. Give them some results they can see--a technology plan, research on new products that would be of benefit to the company, reports on changing issues that impact the company (spyware/adware, viruses, etc.), a newsletter on safe computing practices--any of these would allow you to do research at your desk and show them that there is some value in it for them. This may mean doing some research on your own time.

If you can find a sympathetic executive, tell him/her that you are trying to move from being reactive to being proactive. Get the ok to research new technology that would be of benefit to your company and then report on results.

Good luck.

I often use the phylosophy of Scotty. Any job I have to do I always estimate the time I believe is "Normal". Add 1/2 that time for the "unknown suprise issue making it not normal". Double that figure to tell everyone when to expect to finish. Even though you finish in half the time every was told make sure you don't turn the system back on with the finished result until close to the estimate they recieved at least for the non-critical items. That way when you run into a critical issue and are able to get it up and running in 1/2 the time - you look like a genious. And even the times you come close to the given estimate you still beat it out so no one has too much to complain about. While waiting for that "possibly unneeded" defrag to complete after installing the system with Ghost you could be writing up a quick step by step document to give the users for them to follow the next time thier printer jams.

Develop and set a process that racks all that you do, create weeekly/monthly status, keep them busy analyzing your numbers and smile smile smile....

I remember back in the early days of IP, when Novell was king of networking, and email actually increased efficiency.

We had a single IT wizard, a corpulent fellow I will call Scott. Scott was fond of eating donuts, and always sighed deeply and soulfully whenever he was requested to get up and iron out some network difficulty.

As he was the son of one of the company higher-ups, we all considered Scott a big slacker and bitterly resented his relaxed lifestyle. Carping ensued, but we never got any "satisfaction."

Finally, Scott got a better job in the IT department of a large corporation in town and left us. We were happy to think we would get a more diligent replacement for Scott. In fact, we got two replacement. Fit fellows with good academic IT backgrounds.

You know what is coming...

Nothing ever worked correctly again. These two were constantly trying to upgrade the system to improve performance--but it never worked. They demanded bigger and better computers and the newest operating systems--which broke existing software solution we had been relying on. They required that everyone standardize onto a single operating system if they wanted support, so Mac users had to do their own IT or give up their beloved systems (well, that part worked out--I learned to take care of my own stuff).

In short, we entered the IT hell known by so many other companies whose IT people were long on busyness, but short on clue.

As my boss ruefully stated about a year after the flying monkey IT guys showed up "Scott could run the network better sitting in his cubicle eating donuts than these two working 24/7."

Maybe you can get an immediate supervisor to define your browsing time on TechRepublic and such as "research" and require you to do it between 10-20 hours a week, unless emergencies prevent you. Then you just have to bitch about it once in a while to keep the carpers quiet.

Otherwise, your supervisors may one day learn the lesson of Scott the Donut Eater.

Great Plan, But I would add in that at least twice a week move the pile around a bit. Make sure something new is on top to make those regulars lookers and people stopping by (like your boss) doesnt realize that the pile is not being used. Its also a good idea about 1 once a month or so to clean your desk off and start placing these items back on it several a day so it always looks like fresh stuff.

I used to be the sole IT guy at a small construction management
company, and yes I tended to be in charge of anything that
plugged into a wall. I also had admin-related duties such as
setting up new Bills of Assembly for new jobs and helping fix *&
create systems to make the secretaries' roles easier. My role
expanded into FileMaker Pro development and other activities
like buying & selling used office equipment on ebay.

With all these activities I was always busy, but there were
frequent clashes about priorities with my boss, who was also the
CFO. We solved the problem with weekly meetings during which
I would go over a simple one-page priority list with maybe a
dozen items. As things changed through the week, I would make
a new revised list and put it in her box. That way she always
knew what I was working on. And if certain things near the
bottom never made it to the top, she was the one who made the
decision what to do about that, not me.

That said, I was not a complete success because of my tendency
to underestimate time for tasks and feeling guilty and overly-
explanatory when the unexpected inevitably happened. Part of
this was due to my ambition to make a big difference in how this
company operated, transitioning them from a mom-and-pop
dysfunctional family to a scaleable business that followed the
best practices of the industry. I assumed this agenda was shared
by the principals, and while they would make occasional noises
of agreement, when it came down to it they just wanted to
keep doing things their way.

So the shared list of priorities kept us on the same page
operationally, but in the long run our visions of how the
company was to move forward diverged, and my habit of
underestimation undercut my own confidence.

I now have my own consulting business.

I have been in IT for 30 years in many, many different positions: application programming, software support, database admin. I have NEVER been in a position where I have NOTHING to do. There is always tuning, documentation, procedures to update, code that needs fixing, people to train, ... all the little things that are not crises but are on my "when I get time" list. I wish I were as good as you so I could get paid for just sitting around. Come to work for me and I'll keep you busy.

Sometimes it happens people think we are just waiting for a PC to use its "autohealing feature" and not doing anything, when your nonIT boss has this opinion you have to use some paper and your knoledge to overcame his, why not passing forms with questions to determine the QOS so you can show your boss that evrything is going right and some small issues are going to be resolved or in progress, another thing to do is to LOOK for work. I once had this messy network that always had problems but as soon as I got it running I had no problems at all so I decided to put an Intranet to help some office forms run smothly, everyone was pleased that all the PCs were running fine and also I did somthing EXTRA.
hope this helps goood luck

How can any company IT staff member ever look not busy? You're either a miracle worker or your boss should be worried. There's always room to upgrade, improve or automate something to make your own or other employee's lives easier. The business changes daily; it's impossible to honestly sit down and say "I'm done" in this field. I manage a staff of four technicians and we are responsible for the operation of twenty something servers and 1500+ PCs. Handling Helpdesk calls from some 300 - 500 full and part-time employees, most of whom don't seem to have a clue how to use a computer. (they require a lot of hand-holding - and you have to do it if you want to move up in the organization) Nothing to do eh? Factoring in staff sick and personal days and their vacation time it often seems like there are only 2 of us here on any given day, kicking our feet furiously, fighting to keep our heads above water. I don't have the luxury to be able to prioritize my staff's tasks, but rather spend my time prioritizing emergencies; Trying to decide which emergency is most important to address today. What fire is affecting the most users and hopefully only one fireman can handle it.

Must be tough to be you. Your boss probably wouldn't be so hard on you if everytime he came to your office he didn't see you with your feet kicked up on your desk while you sit there surving porn sites, with your zipper open or watching another one of the movies you've been sucking up their bandwidth downloading.

Just a tip. Leave the slippers and bath robe at home.

Though people are getting acquainted with the realm of PCs, usually they don't understand how their operation and maintenance goes, also that they can have diseases.
Try telling them you are something like an MD at the emergency room, sometimes its quiet sometimes not.
If you are dealing with very old fashioned people tell them that PCs are their pigs and you are the Vet, actually you are doing the dirty work.
Hope this may help

I think you may find it helpful if you started to develop some long term plans for IT in the company. For example, you may want to set up a Linux box and learn the technology for a possible application in the future. You should have a list of things that you are "researching" for future company benefits. And whenever you aren't busy sorting out "fires" at least you will be learning some new technology for the future benefits of the company. Things to research are: Voice over IP. Linux applications, Faxserver software, Collaboration tools and enhancements on the existing set you have. For example, researching the collaboration of your voicemail and email/fax systems. It might be possible to create a list of future possible projects that the company eventually will want to implement. These things will help sharpen your research and implementation skills as well as the maintenance and resourcefullness that you already have. When ever you are asked, "what are you doing?" you should always have a Business answer to explain what you are doing. And its certainly not "down time". None of us ever have down-time because employers don't pay us money to sit there and "rest" between fires. They don't mind paying you to research business applications that will add to efficiency and enhance the profitability of your company.

If you simply use the above analogies (firemen, ems, etc.), you risk having your job outsourced! Management viewpoin: "we'll buy the talent when/if we need it -- cheaper that way."

Suggestion 1: how do you bosses think about OJT? Like the farmer analogy, you are sharpening your skills and looking for ways to maximize the productivity of all company empoyees ("research").

Suggestion 2: You are also being proactive, looking for threats and learning how to ward them off before they hit. I'm sure they are familiar with the damage of viruses/worms/etc. Explain you are working to safeguard the company from internet threats. Just be careful how you sell this, otherwise internet access gets yanked due to "fear factor"...

It sounds like you're dealing with nitwits--and that you don't have sufficient experience in organizationl politics to know some effective ways of doing that.

First, understand that you simply are never going to change their mindset. Therefore, you have to appear to do what they want. And then undermine them.

So, for starters, understand that you have to "look busy" all the time. Period. There's just no getting around it. (Of course, anyone with an ounce of sense understands that any professional--a doctor, for example--is required to spend *lots* of time keeping up with developments in the field. Obviously, your managers don't understand that. Or are not smart enough to leave you alone.)

In practical terms, for starters, when someone finds you at your computer and objects, the answer is that you're researching a tough problem. Or maybe trying to find some piece of software that will address; or something similar.

Second, maybe you should find some place other than your office to use to do your professional reading. You are simply going to have to be a little sneaky here. Use some machine--at the desk of one of your "customers" (or clients, or whatever they're called in your shop)--to do that. And move around.

Bottom line: you just have to outfox the nitwits in your shop. That's more or less a universal law of organizational behavior.