Agreed, I love reading these as I did with the PC world thread. I'm also addicted to the TFS subreddit now.
One of these days I'll get into Reddit. Just found out that my boss, the 'Technical Director', didn't know what Wardriving was until last night..
don't get in to reddit. Its full of internet people and their second and third hand opinions. Stick with bit-tech, the home of ALL original thought.
I think I give up I honestly do! The junior, little to my knowledge, has spent most of the time they have been at work in recent times installing a huge piece of software on 74 mac's that are going to be on a segregated network and thus don't need the software as they won't be able to see the servers which means they will now have to spend an equal amount of time removing it. bluerghhh. Oh it's alright though they are sending them on a load of ccna courses....to help them do basic administration of their microsoft network
Man, Margon, can't you just spend some time killing the guy? Professionally, I mean. Surely they must see invoices from yourself for time, so would it be too much to add "Spent X hours resolving issue caused by <name>"? Or am I being unprofessional with that thought?
Please tell me when you say he installed it on 74 macs, he's not done them individually? Like, he's been wise enough, maybe after the first couple of dozen to think 'hang on, i'm repeating a lot of work, maybe i'll have a 5 minute google and automate some of this'. I can't get sent on ccna courses I have done my vmware fast track courses for VI3, vSphere 4 and vSphere 5, but never sat the exam for VCP. On paper I have a marginally related degree (COMPUTERS!) and oh holy **** i've just realised next week will mark 16 years working in IT. cheque please?
I think everyone is confused about what everyones role is. They have hired this new junior, who literally doesn't know their arse from their elbow, and I think the idea is I am to transfer knowledge to them (which isn't really my job). Up until the last 2 weeks, I have been fairly lenient with what I have been billing and what I haven't been billing, but the thing that annoys me, is they are not learning anything. They fire off emails to me, before even engaging their brain and having a think about anything - this really annoys me, really annoys me. As all day every day I am juggling all my client commitments, for the last 2 weeks I have also been juggling my bosses as he has taken a 2 week vacation. So now, every time they call me up, and I have to say anything other than yes or no, or impart any kind of tutelage then I have billed half an hour. Their support contract nets them 2 hours a month support....This month we have just gone into the 10th hour. They are not going to happy, but at the same time, I am not particularly happy with the way they have chosen to make use of my services. I gave them a whole load of books, some tcp/ip books, some books about networking, some microsoft networking books, just loads of stuff I have about at home that I have already read - anyone who actually wanted to make a good start at this IT world would be literally jumping at being given these books (or maybe I was the only suckah that loved learning about the thing I told people I loved) but I think they must just use them as a footstand. And they always protest to having a million things on - well yes, if you are going to manually install a massive piece of software on 70 odd macs, you are going to be busy for a while - BUT THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING. beginning of september I am booked for a day to set up their segregated network and talk them through VLANs etc. But how they are going to follow when they plug patch leads in and out of the same switch I will never know
How have I never seen this thread! I used to support a 1st line desk i feel in between 1st and 2nd line so was kind of a firewall for them. Couple of examples of 1st line analyst fixes at our place just brief notes theres other bits in the tickets machine IDs etc Network printer user unable to print - attempted fix GPUpdate on PC advised user to reboot and call back. Workstation slowness - Cleared cache and cookie, java kill, no change ran IPrelease now unable to ping machine please assist. User requesting access to facebook - Please white list Fackbook.com for user Normal days work
This **** just gets better and better and better. For what it's worth, I think you're absolutely doing the right thing by charging them half-hourly for the informal tech support calls. At my place of work we don't do this as a rule, happily sorting out any 10-minute problem once in a while, and some people just take liberties: we end up engaged in 30-minute phone calls if we're not careful, hand-holding people through things that we should be doing directly for them (and getting paid) or which just fall outside of our remit. Eventually I have to tell people matter-of-factly, "I can't spend any longer teaching you how to use your computer, but I have the number of somebody who does private tuition if you'd like," but by then I've usually wasted 25 minutes already. Time I just can't get back. The nasty thing about the informality of our setup is that I can't easily tell, starting out, whether a phone call is going to be a simple two-minute fix or a 25-minute no-charge tech support session. If I was a hardass about it and refused to dispense any advice or Q&A at all over the phone, we'd lose a lot of customers. You're in the lucky position of having known customers with a fixed, clear contract who you can bill if they waste your time on the phone. I envy you that
we got all new printers throughout our office earlier this year. there were posters printed out and stuck on all the doors (including in bathrooms) advertising how beneficial they were and how they would help us save paper. how they save paper when everything is A4 and everyone still prints out 1 side to a sheet by default wasn't explained, and there was no mention of getting newer more-paper-free paper. Also we once had someone submit two ideas to a improvement program review board. Number 1 was to disable screensavers and have monitors turn off to save power (we had matching corporate screensavers through the entire office building). Number 2 was to fold on all workstations when they're not in use, particularly overnight. Neither is inherently bad, but suggesting them both would seem to indicate these hadn't been thought through thoroughly. Another time the same guy turned out to a meeting with a list of 'over 50 improvements that could benefit our department immediately'. The entire list appeared to be things he'd picked up from blogs or articles about the way google or other tech companies work. Unfortunately the current head of something-or-other in charge is currently dead set on trying to make us as much like facebook or apple as he can (based on what the internet has told him about them). For the record, we're an internal IT division of a large corporation, we produce no products save internally developed software, and all our customers are internal.
So, if you have followed this thread from the start you will know the story of my lovely network admin in London and their ability to loop back switches. And you would probably think, that if you were that person, or you had free reign over that network, and you had only 2 or 3 weeks ago done that, you would have at least some small amount of due care and attention about what you are doing and what you are messing with. You would think. So 2 weeks ago, I went and segregated their network, added in a VLAN, which was spread throughout the building and was thus spread across 4 switches that I configured in such a way that the two networks existed fine and were just happy. Yesterday some funny stuff started happening - One client on one network picked up an address from the other network, I didn't have time to trouble shoot it, I informed them that their networks must be crossed somewhere with a physical cable as I did have chance to quickly look over the switch configs - I got told that's impossible as nothing has changed and no one has patched anything (which is untrue - as every time I go there the comms cupboards are different), I told them that that cannot be true, as I had it working 2 weeks ago, tested and it had worked up until yesterday, so someone must have changed something. This morning - I gave admin a list of ports to check, and to tell me where they were all patched. Low and behold - one of the 3 configured ports on their main switch, which when I was talking their admin through the VLAN setup, I explicitly explained that it was very important they were never changed nor moved and probably that they should label them as such - WAS PATCHED BACK INTO THE SAME SWITCH, thus happily bridging my networks. They are individually responsible for just about doubling my work load this week haha, and it's all stuff that should be non-issues, or stuff they have tried to do without asking what they need to do.
Can you not lock the racks and leave the keys with someone responsible? Then again have you considered that some grand force is making someone do this to give you work so you get paid. Unless you're on a salary. Then someone is making extra work for you for no good reason.
Unfortunately - I can't tell them to do anything other than what they ask me to do, I am just a supplier at the end of the day and they are supposed to have their own internal IT department - the person who would be left with the keys is precisely the person who would screw it all up. Salary as well unfortunately!
I asked this - and they have said it wasn't them, and is in fact blaming it on her boss - but he was the person who was with me when I found all the loop backs - so unless he is entirely bonkers as well (possible) I can't imagine he would patch a switch into itself. I have no idea. I did a bit of shouting earlier at them and said they really need to sort their lives out as 2 infrastructure breaks, which could have been entirely avoided, and were both 100% done by someone (not maliciously but still someone physically has done it) and I have told them to lock everything, and for anyone internal to go through IT before opening any cupboards and have asked IT to call me before anyone tries patching anything. it's not even really that big a network! but I guess these things happen if you give someone with absolutely zero experience or knowledge unrestricted access over a corporate network. What annoys me is I know there are people out there, with experience, good technicians, who would love that job.
Makes me kinda glad I have to show ID and sign they keys for a Comms Room out from "Your names not down you're not coming in" Security Man!
THIS. While I have no explicit degree, I have several hundred hours of experience under my belt. And I'm not even 20 yet! (And, no, I'm not counting web browsing, leisure or for work, for even a second of it!) While I haven't yet had to deal with incompetent employees, one thing I had to do was find an old slim-line PCI modem (didn't have any, so I had to mod a bracket) and install it in someone's Dell GX60 slimline (that's still alive today!) because their dial-up ISP sold a buggy modem that died every month, and they had to pay for a new one each time. Second time, same family: The modem wouldn't connect, but would yesterday. So, I took a look. Immediate no-connect. So, I looked in the settings. I kid you not, this is something like what the outgoing number looked like: Code: Sio/aw/+?klriogmkl;grg How Windows even accepted it as an outgoing number, I have no idea. Told them the only way it could have possibly happened is if someone put it in there. Grandchild, perhaps. Nope! All in their 20s.Hmmmmm.... Great-grandchild? Nope, just some yest... OH.
I don't know how people can **** up so spectacularly, my knowledge is pretty limited network wise. I can take bare ends and terminate everything neatly, fully populate a can. I understand the basics, I can cope with Vlans etc. If you don't know how to proceed find someone that knows what to do! There is not shame in asking, it's much better than guessing and causing disruption. Anyhow's best thing I've seen from contractors is fitting a suspended ceiling. The fit the new ceiling 2ft bellow the existing solid one. It's the classic wire suspended frame with foam tiles. The add new strip lights and wire them in. A week later the teacher asks where his dummy camera has gone (he liked to scare the kids into thinking the room was under the constant watch of the head teacher). I chuckle as I realised the contractors had lowered the ceiling and not bothered to move the camera. 2 weeks later a tile drops down in the middle of the lesson, it's all discoloured on the back and it looks like its shrunk. We hop up in the roof...the original lights are still in place, no biggie, they must have been lazy and left them up there. Then we turn the new lights on, they have left BOTH sets wired in on the same circuit. The old list had cooked and shrunk the new tiles. We where luckily the whole block didn't go up!
