Our IT dept – 5 people: Director of IT, Network Admin (me), AS/400 programmer, SQL programmer, Helpdesk guy
Director of IT was the network admin before he became director when his boss retired – pretty much my fallback guy for when I’m out on vacation for the week. Our helpdesk guy is a sorta jack of all trades for PC’s, printers, etc… – but is pretty much relegated to the mundane everyday things like answering the helpdesk phone, printer consumables, answering stupid questions, moving stuff around, etc. Our AS/400 programmer sticks to his job – programming the midrange and doesn’t stray. Our SQL programmer is brilliant at what he does, however at times he thinks he’s a network admin / helpdesk guy and drifts off to fix someone’s PC problem when he’s got projects piled up on his desk.
One of the issues I have is that the SQL and helpdesk guys tend to work on tasks that they’re not assigned to do – which takes their focus away from those projects they’re working on.
The network is my domain – the servers, mail system, infrastructure, etc… etc… Once in a while while going through the helpdesk queue – I’ll see that the SQL guy is out fixing someone’s Palm problem, or even worse playing around with Group Policy on the domain controller to make something he’s programming work better (in a live environment!!!). Or that the helpdesk guy is granting people permission to the network, plugging in a vendor system to our network, etc. Now, I’m not really a control freak – but when it comes to the security of the network, the fewer hands you have in the pot, the less likely things are gonna get screwed up. Part of the problem is that my boss told me to give these guys full admin rights to the domain (which I disagree).
How are things in your shop – do you have clear boundaries where the programmer just codes and the helpdesk guy answers the phone? Or are people expected to pitch-in when someone’s out sick or on vacation? They do it whether I’m there or not… never ceases to amaze me.
I don’t mind the help from time to time when I’m insanely busy as long as they are following my guidance, but the little surprises that crop up from time to time by people who act before they think about the consequences is what gets under my skin. Or am I just being an untrusting control freak?
Now, I know our helpdesk guy has to start somewhere… but he’s been with us for nearly 6 months now and he still requires a lot of hand-holding, so I’m wary when it comes to letting him get a taste of what I do (he runs the backups – a chore in my book grabbing tapes from another building every day).