UK IT workers are skiving slackers

Niki Mistry : stop pushing product!. Ghost is the best backup solution, anything more is just laziness on IT part. EVe online is NOT taxing and quite possible to have two sessions plus general webbrowsing going on. Sabotage? Not if you want another job in the industry..(if you dont however..)

...for those of us currently unemployed. 

As a buy with an engineering background moving back into IT, I understand and empathise with Jim's fustration about the seemingly lax way that his companies IT department is handling the documents and technical drawings that he and his colleagues make.

The lack of any kind of document control system in an engineering office is actaully a very serious thing. It removes the ability to see the changes made by an individual and gauge the impact from those changes on the company as a whole.

I perosnally think that IT depts don't really need VNC when you have Altiris Remote Desktop in Altiris Deployment Solution. You can chat to or take over a single users machine as they are logged in and see first hand the error that they were discribing to you buy email or on the phone.

Oh dear Jim, you don't have admin rights on your local machine because of the shed loads of malware that infects users computers because users are inherently stupid and click "yes" to everything that appears infront of you. Once that nasty little bit of malware has your local machine with admin privs it will start trundling around the network and jumping into file shares.

Same reason with external pc's or laptops they are not "supported" in as much as how does an IT department with diverse people some on holiday some not support multple OS'S with different pc's. The answer is they can't unless they plan for it and they can't if you randomly plug it into their network. And the argument that says "well it's only me using it" doesn't wash because those things tend to balloon until one day your doing something mission critical with it, it blows up and they are on the hook for making it work again.

And good god you don't let people save stuff to the local drives because it ain't backed up and they will save something important there sooner or later and again you'll be expected to retrieve it.

Most IT departments run VNC or PC Anywhere up to including directors e.t.c the admins have root/admin access on every server as it is, they've got your web logs, your emails and all your files, why the hell does it matter if they can see your screen? Programs like this just make it quicker for the IT dept to solve problems since they don't have to leave their seat.


In relation to the comment above, i see your point of view, however companies work differently and how IT works in one company may be completely different to another.

Granted in your case they sound exceptionaly slack but put into consideration more things, eve online is not a taxing game and other tasks can be performed very easily whilst "playing". Also you cant really have outside IT regulators as they would have no idea how the full systems work and how one part may relate to another. It's also very easy to just avoide doing things wrong during a time inwhich it would be "regulated".

I dont work for your company, but i look after 2 seperate offices of 80 people each on my own, and i work hard for my job, i will admit to playing eve on my lunch break but i will not admit to being dangerous, in fact i spend almost all my time in working hours helping other people do there job more efficently and cleaning up after other people's mess. 

Dont tar the entire industry with the same brush. it's like saying accountants are all boring!

Jim, you sound like such a sore (l)user, a crybaby who throws tantrums because you cannot get your way.

Your IT department are correct. Locking machines down so users cannot install their own programs or fonts or whatever is the correct thing to do. It is what we do, and you know what - the users accept it. Why can't you? If it is not done then all sorts of shit would end up on the machines! You need to learn what users are like!

Of course Linux has bugs, so does Windows and Mac, but bugs are fixed quickly in Linux. Worms?, haven't heard of any recently but then again from the tone of your mail I am taking it that you do not know what you are talking about and are trolling. They don't want you hacking Linux because either you don't know what you are doing or they end up fixing your mess and are fed up with it. I know because I have to fix our users' mess!

If your IT department are truly ineffective then I think enough complaints within your company would bring them into line. It is possible to fire an IT worker, and very few of them would actually sabotage a company system.

You, however, appear to have serious problems with your IT department. Somehow I think they have upset you, or maybe you have upset them. I would think the latter because it appears that you are the one with the 'high-almighty' attitude who seems to be mouthing off.

If you have a problem with the IT department then go and talk to the IT manager. Find out why they won't install software. Don't just write crap posts complaining about them!

And there is another thing : in these days where CYA is paramount, email gives traceable proof that yes, you did tell your colleague about an issue yesterday.
Never mind that it was yesterday 6:40 P.M., you can still complain today at 9 A.M. that nothing has been done yet.
I know a few specialists of that kind of "communication".

I work in an IT department myself and if it is quiet (not often) or lunchtime, sure I will have a quick browse on the web, but its usually sites such as the Inq or usually IT sites anyway as it's my interest. 

Most of the time it is busy, and if people are saying they have nothing to do then i'm sorry, that's just being lazy because you can always be looking at trying to improve things which makes life easier for both you and the users, there is always something to do in IT.

I can relate to the comment about management wanting you to be in your chairs in the office. Often it doesn't matter that you have had to go to the warehouse to fix a printer so customer orders can go out the door or whatever, as soon as someone see's you are not in the office or you don't answer your desk phone they assume you are being lazy and not doing your job.

As for not having Admin priviliges, well, we do give Admin rights where I am but as to if it's right or not depends on who is using the machine. There are some people who use a work laptop or desktop for work, there are others who take their work laptops home and use it as if it is there own PC and then complain it's running like crap and I spend half a day cleaning it of 20 different spyware or malware programs. And of course IT get the blame for the machine running like crap.

Not all IT folks are the same, I have a good relationship with just about everyone where I work, whether it be warehouse staff, cleaners, Directors, whoever, good communication and a mutual respect is always key to this.

We're not all slackers, not by a long shot :)


I use to be one of those... i was hired as an IT Manager for a small company, i did about 50 minutes of work every day, leaving alot of time for 'other' things.

The IT trolls where I work impose ridiculous regulations in order to make their own lives easier.
Noone has admin rights on their own computers (if you want something installed, you have to ask IT to do it, and they take a week or two because they are "too busy", so nobody bothers.) and noone is allowed to plug a non-IT computer into the network in case it might contain a virus (fyi linux is chock full of "bugs and worms", OpenVMS on a DEC Alpha is even worse ;)
As such, it's a pain in the backside for anyone to get anything done, but IT have nothing to do.
If you do try to get something done, e.g. using a far more powerful Linux workstation, any "hacking" (a term defined by the IT dept) is an immediate sacking offence, and they are judge and jury on that one.

At the same time our IT systems are a complete mess - a single windows share for terabytes worth of engineering documents and technical drawings with no database or version control system in sight. Noone is allowed to save anything to local drives, to "protect our intellectual property" (as if anyone would want our not-very-intellectual property), so when that server goes down, the entire company is at its knees.
Ironically, speaking of IP, I read somewhere that most corporate espionage cases are from someone in the IT dept.. Small wonder since they are the only people who have unrestricted access to all company files, and noone is watching them. To the extent that I often see them playing Eve Online and posting on forums during work hours. So much for being "too busy"..

All the computers have a VNC backdoor too, which cannot be disabled, including the MD's laptop.. 
I also read somewhere that most sysadmins would sabotage company systems if laid off.
Maybe that's why they haven't been fired yet.

Every other department though (e.g. Engineering, Finance, Management, HR, Legal etc) have very strict regulations imposed by the government, various industry bodies, the ISO etc, and even have external inspectors, but nothing whatsoever for IT.
Thus there is noone with any power to sack IT that has any clue about IT themselves.



TL;DR: IT aren't just slackers, they are dangerous, and need way stricter regulations.

If these IT guys are doing their jobs correctly they should never have to come in unless the network/cluster/management software pages them that something has broken.

It's management that thinks we need to be in our chairs waiting for "the call."

Trust me, we knew it was broken hours (maybe even days) before management does.


Considering that most companies treat their employees in an off-hand and unconcerned manner, it's no surprise that employees feel no need to respond any differently to their employers.