Role of Eye-Tee

To me the role of eye-tee is a very black and white thing. At the core we exist to make the work easier for the end user, the person that does the work of the business. This applies whether you work in an eye-tee department or an eye-tee company.

Almost any business function can exist without us, in some capacity. Granted it is made orders of magnitude easier and more efficient by us. Because of this firm middle ground stance, I sometimes find myself disagreeing with both other eye-tee roles and the business side of companies.

One of my big peeves is when companies separate groups based on revenue generating vs non-revenue generating, typically to cater more to the needs and wants of the revenue generators. Really? If all of the other groups weren't needed then wouldn't you just get rid of them? Revenue enabling or better yet revenue enhancing is a much better term than non-revenue generating.

Consider a brokerage firm, they could still have traders on the floor of the exchange.  They may even still be able to run paper tickets and stock certificates.  It's conceivable that said traders could survive with little or no technical help.  Now surround those same traders with a (non-revenue generating) eye-tee department to bring them the latest electronic advances in trading applications and information consolidation via Bloomberg, Reuters or the like. Will they not be better informed with the latest news and information.  Will they not be better servicing the customer by having access to real time exchange data and allowing their clients to view constantly updated accounts of their holdings.  If you had a choice between a stock trader working with real time data and one using 20 minute delayed information, which one would you choose?

IBM, like them or hate them, ran an interesting commercial with an analogy about using real time data in decisions.  The gist is, try taking a picture of a busy intersection now, then in 5 minutes decide when to cross that intersection based on that photo.  If you break it down to that level, technology, when properly implemented and utilized, allows us to make better decisions and provide better service.

Now the flip side. The eye-tee department that views themselves as indispensable and always tries to mold the customer to their way of thinking is no longer making the work easier for the end user.  Many a department has lost sight of what should be the ultimate goal and by doing so ends up complicating the ability to get the customers core work done. This is not to say that every decision an eye-tee department or group makes is going to be viewed as the correct one by the business, but if we keep the core goal of helping the business work smarter instead of harder then we are going our job.

-Z

Double-Edged Sword of Kindness

Have you ever sat and watched an email chain go on in front of you.  You see it quickly gathering steam, getting longer and more convoluted with each "Reply to All".  You sit there knowing that one response from you and the problem would be resolved, but you hesitate.  You resist the urge to be helpful knowing it is the right thing to do.  There are two likely reasons to not respond.

1. You are an arse.  While this is technically possible and entirely feasible, I have found that "most" people are generally not spiteful just for the sake of being spiteful.
2. You have been previously cut by the Double-Edged Sword of Kindness.

Those of you that have been sliced by this nasty beast know what I'm talking about.  It comes in many forms:

• It is the innocent tech help that you give a friend.  
• It is the short email you decide to jump in on and help
• It is the familiar phone number that comes up on the call display at 2 minutes to quitting time

Regardless of the method this nastiness chooses to present itself to you the outcome is always the same.  You provide what you see as a quick bit of assistance to a person in need and you become their default action in the future.

Even if you try to take the teach a man to fish approach and show the person how they can resolve their own issue, the only part they seem to remember is that you are the person that knows how to fix it.  The most frustrating part about this to me is that even though you started out with good intentions you end up being an ass because you eventually have to tell people to do their own work.

I'm not sure the moral of this.  It's not like anyone is going to tell you not to help people, especially since that should be the primary role of eye-tee.  Just beware that this monster is out there and don't let it get you too many times.

-Z

The Missing Work

Oh short work week, why have you forsaken me?

I used to love the short work week.  The joy of having an extra day on the weekend is still a fantastic thing, something to be cherished and adored.  Recently though I have been increasingly disillusioned with the short week that precedes or follows the glorious holiday day.

I have come to realize that the more I slowly claw my way up the "rope of responsibility" (more on that later), the more I despise the short week.  It used to stand for all that is right with the world, now it means extra work and longer hours.  I'm not sure how I didn't see it before but all the short week means now is that there are more meetings and more work, that you would have had 5 days to do and now you only have 4.

I have no idea where the work on that 5th day used to go, it seemed like it was just gone, it never needed to be done.  Now it gets spread across all of the other 4 days, making them more painful than they need to be.

Oh days of the Missing Work, where have you gone and how do I get you back?

-Z

Non-Tech People Scare Me

Sometimes I'm terrified of the non-technological people.

I think it is because I'm not really sure what goes on in their heads.  Currently it is the "letter writers" that are at the top of the freaky list.  I'm not really sure if these people exist outside my life or if it is only me that has the ability to find them.

Have you ever listened to a person complain about a company or a product and somewhere in the conversation they manage to work in that they are, "going to write a letter"?
That is usually when I perk up, "Do you mean send an email?"
"Nope, write a letter."
And they've lost me.  How can it possibly be more effective to write a letter on a piece of paper and mail it to a corporation that seems more likely are just going to junk it than forward it to the person you want to see it.  Do companies even have protocols anymore to handle the paper letter?  In the days of contact us email addresses and feedback forms why write a letter?

It seems that my dad has taken this to the extreme.  Mom was telling me about this feud, for lack of a better word, that dad had with another person in the smallish town they are from.  They were taking shots at each other by writing letters to the newspaper and then sending rebuttals.

Lets break this down for a minute.

1. 1 hour = Get paper and pen, sit down and write your letter.
2. 1 hour = Find or buy envelope and stamps.
3. 30 min = Take letter to mailbox.
4. 2 days = Wait for letter to get to the newspaper.
5. 1 day   = Wait for newspaper to decide if it is worthy of putting in the paper.
6. 1 day   = Wait for newspaper to come out the next day with your comment in it.  

Adds up to 4 days and 2.5 hours, just to get your comment in front of the person it was intended for.  Double that now to see how they respond.  It would be like watching the "electric company" word makers send youtube clips back and forth.  Imagine a 4 day delay between each part of the word, yikes.

The reason this is scary to me is, who stays angry enough, long enough to use this as a method of arguing with someone?  That is a person that I don't want angry at me.

-Z

Happy Bird Day!

Hope everyone has a great turkey day.

Is it creepy that the turkey looks so happy, considering?  Or is it secretly angry, looks like it might be feeling a bit mischievous.

-Z

Welcome to TLP

Threat Level Pumpkin?  Pumpkin?!? Really?

Yup pumpkin.  A collection of musings about technology and eye-tee, the comedic and sometimes face-palm worthy moments that come from working, playing and living with technology.

Have you ever thought that you were doing a good job?  Thought that your department or group was meeting the needs of the users?  Were you basing that thought on the request that make it to you and how you handle those in an timely and efficient manner?

What about the requests that you never see.  These requests don't directly tie to you but indicate a bigger issue.  The issue of understanding what the technology can do for you.  I have always been a big believer that eye-tee exists to make the job of the users easier.  We shouldn't be overwhelming users with bureaucracy, let them come to you with a problem and provide them a solution.  Therein lies the crux of the issue, human nature lends people to think that they know what they want.  While this may be the case the majority of the time, in eye-tee it seems to rarely be true.  If you could somehow reach into peoples brains when it comes to technology issues and have them tell you what their problem is instead of telling you what they think the solution is, all lives would be better.

Came across just such a request the other day which lead me to creating ThreatLevelPumpkin.com.

I was sitting around having a drink with a co-worker from a group outside of eye-tee.  One of those blissfully far away from the technology side of the job who are still grateful for the services eye-tee provides.  She is going on about a request she made through the help-desk and how it was taking a really long time.

Request as explained to me by the non technological user:

I asked them for an SFTP site so we could upload video files to the network from a Mac

Keep in mind that for most users this kind of specific language would be akin to a non-doctor walking into the clinic and saying: "the second metatarsal in my right foot is hurting, I think you need to surgically fix it"

She goes on to tell me how the help-desk had sent he request to the UNIX team who in turn had indeed set her up with an account on an SFTP server.  They provided her with the username, password and servername, all of the information she would have needed IF she had had any idea what she actually needed.

Not having any clue what do with with this User/Pass/Server information she calls the help-desk back again and talks to someone that tries to walk her through opening a remote desktop (which is Windows only for those that don't know) connection to the UNIX server.  Now they are both confused so they sent another ticket to the UNIX team member who setup the SFTP account in the first place.  He updates the ticket saying they should SSH into the server to do what they need.

At this point in the story my friend looks at me and says, "see eye-tee people are so hard to deal with, after hearing about SFTP, SSH, UNIX, Remote Desktop and AD login, I was so confused, all I wanted to do was copy a video from a Mac to our file share all this information is Threat Level Pumpkin to me"

There it is. Two epiphanies in the last part of the story.  "All I wanted to do"; if the initial call to the help-desk had started with that sentence it would have been a five minute call, problem solved, everyone is happy.   The help-desk would have told her how to go about copying the files from a Mac to the network share.

So who is at fault?

1. The requesting user for proposing a solution instead of outlining a problem?
2. The help-desk for creating the ticket as requested instead of asking more questions?
3. The UNIX team member for creating the SFTP account without getting more details?
4. Me for just not having another drink and letting it go?

I currently have no idea how to fix this issue and can't imaging that I'm the only one seeing it.  Help?

Back to the second epiphany from the story.  "Threat Level Pumpkin" Somehow this got stuck in my head like someone humming the theme song to Sanford and Sons and I needed to create a place to store the puzzling and laugh-out-loud moments that come from dealing with eye-tee and technology.

-Z

Tech, the Gift That Keeps on Taking

Do you have a specialty in your circle of friends?

Maybe you are the person that knows Photoshop and everyone asks you to graft peoples faces onto the rear ends of monkeys.
Maybe you know the stock market and are constantly asked to pick the next tenbagger.

Me? I'm the "tech" guy, which somehow equates to being the go to person for anything that takes electricity.  I don't really understand how IT guy translates to "he who knows about anything invented after the ARPAnet" I mean I'm not going to ask a pharmacist how to cure cancer.

I usually get the standard range of unanswerables such as; What is the best laptop?  Which TV technology is going to last?  Why do people buy Windows phones when Android phones are clearly better?  OK that last one is actually answerable; they don't.

Now, not to say that the questions us tech people usually get asked don't have answers they just don't have 10 second answers like people expect.  Ask us a question and you will get 20 questions back about what you are trying to do with this shiny new technology.  It's not that we are just being difficult, it's that we have become accustomed to having to interpret questions so that we can tell you what you are really looking for.

Which brings me back to the topic, of this post.  Isn't it great when you watch a buddy or family member unwrap a gift or proudly display their latest tech purchase while the time counter starts tallying up in your head about how long you are going to have to spend helping (read as, doing it for) them get it to a functioning state.

Worse is when you forget this almost unavoidable constant and purchase a tech gift for a family member. This act should be known as "the gift that keeps on taking" because you will never be rid of the unwritten support agreement that is tied to said gift.  You'd better hope to whomever works for you that the tech gift works as designed for its entire life and likely longer, else you will never be able to live that down.

-Z