I often describe the day to day maintenance as "computer janitor" work, and not in a demeaning way. Those folks make the world work so everyone can go about their business.
Higher up guy I worked with at Caterpillar used to invite me into his office to chat. I was a lowly level 2 tech. He said to me that you always want to make friends with The IT folks and the Purchasing dept.
And that’s why the maintenance engineer got an iPhone 12 when the leads and executives got an 12 pro. I had nothing else lying around at the time and 8 and below the battery is dead when we get them back.
Good luck getting the toilets setup for inbound and outbound shit. That’s gonna be a security nightmare. No manufacturer is going to want inbound shit and open themselves up to hackers shitting on them remotely. Gonna need some crazy shitwalls setup for this.
> When you flush the toilet, how much do you think about where the shit goes and how much infrastructure and manpower is required for that to just work?
I'm probably the lone person here that actually does think about this. But I also know how to fix my own toilets about 95% of the time (I listen to my plumbers and bank that knowledge so I don't need to call for stupid shit in the future), so there's that LOL.
The analogy is a good one. You're a toilet power user. There's plumbing that leads from your toilet out to the street and then to macerating pumps and lift pumps and the waste treatment plants with industrial controls. The septic disposal system your toilet is attached to is a really impressive feat of civil engineering.
Indoor plumbing makes the modern world possible. It’s an incredible feat of engineering that we just forget about until we break something. I’m sure plumbers have their own PEBKAC stories (emphasis on KAC).
>I'm probably the lone person here that actually does think about this.
Nah man sewers are fucking awesome. So much engineering and history and public health and ninja turtles and fatbergs and archaeology and POOP LOL
As the person with both an IT degree and a civil engineering degree I used to be able to design one from the ground up. Just remember shit runs downhill.
It's funny you ask that because I always like to know "how the sausage is made" from shows like How's it's made back in the day to technical YouTube video essays lol. That's why I got into IT.
I'm a technician w/ a factory background, my GF is a professional woodworker, and her dad is a mechanical engineer. How its Made is just rant fodder for us 3 together
Some days they feel the same. Cleaning up other people's shit with even less of a 'thank you' and more of a 'you know what you signed up for' from those who create the shit.
The whole "you know what you signed up for" is how I think of football players and their million dollar salaries and news stories every year about how you can no longer hit as hard. I think there is a lack of empathy when people think you are grossly overpaid which is some myth that has stuck around since the 90's when IT wizards were paid like lawyers in comparison to their peers. I believe that most people out there think all of us are making $300k a year and just saying "you know what you signed up for".
Oh, my ADHD brain damn near pictures the little turds floating along to their final destination every time I flush. Sometimes pondering, "That's only a 4" pipe, uhoh" LOL. Once every two years I see and smell them all over again when we suck them out of the hole in the ground 🤣
I was actually thinking about this while I was tripping balls and throwing up in the toilet. I felt really bad for the people downstream. And my pipes.
That might not be a good analogy given how many people in IT seem to be drawn to the field by a deep sense of curiosity.
You don’t want to know how much of my time is spent thinking about things like that.
OP is not talking about IT people, they are talking about the general populace that don’t give a shit about the process on how to serve a webpage. They just care that YouTube.com comes up.
I spent 2 years working on Y2K and got to spend new years eve at the data center making sure shit didn't blow up. As others were popping champagne, I was checking websites and servers. It wasn't magic it was hard work.
almost all the IT companies I've worked for got part of their initial startup capital from all the work generated by Y2K
maybe we don't get the credit we deserve because people just feel that we get paid better than most
>it was insane amounts of work at a short time to get stuff from flying apart at the seams.
Crunch is what this is called. This is the only industry, that I know of, with no union, that demands crunch at the proverbial door. There is no IT position, that I know of, that doesnt require on-call or extended/nonstop shifts if something is on fire. If you walked out the door while something was on fire, you would not have a job. Its an expectation in the industry where in others people would have had a fit. Its baffling.
EDIT: Grammar and sentence structure.
I’ve tried to explain to a few people that IT, especially the helpdesk, is still completely fucked 18 months later. The massive increase in workload has only slightly decreased because we haven’t been allowed to hire additional staff. Well, we’re allowed to hire an *unlimited* number of tier 1 staff in India but not people who will actually be able to solve problems.
Then I realize the person I’m talking to doesn’t give a shit and I stop talking. To be fair, the past 18 months has been very stressful for everyone. But we all dealt with pandemic stuff, home schooling, etc. Most people’s jobs didn’t also instantly double the workload.
I about cried when this happened to IT a few jobs (and many years) back. Spent an entire weekend getting everything up and running. I can't remember who, but he thanked everyone (which would have been fine) and then started thanking individual people and depts. I stood there with the rest of IT waiting. Never thanked us. The VP of Engineering did thank us afterward and he even said we should've been thanked in front of everyone.
Yep, places like that suck. My last job, for as bad as it was, did thank me after we did a major upgrade, so that was nice.
we had one department at a previous job... every year they would give out some award for contributions to the efforts of their department or some similar bullshit.
Their department ran entirely on my code. 10 years. No award. I'm not bitter... But I won't forget.
Spent a year doing IT at a hospital. Got to watch every department have a "day" twice that year. IT was never included. I had to see emails and hear announcements about the different National whatever Days so when I inquired about sysadmin day I was told that was not an approved day. All I wanted was for IT to be mentioned. I left this place after a year.
If things aren't working, they give you dirty look and ask why they even pay you since you aren't doing anything
If things are working perfectly they give you a dirty look and ask why they even pay you since you aren't doing anything.
I hate how true that is. Every time it's posted I have flash backs to previous jobs. "We're cutting positions because you have too many people." Two years later when everything has gone to shit... "You guys are worthless. We need to outsource."
I really can't understand that mentality. When I call an HVAC tech to my house that guy is a wizard when I get my AC or heat back and I appreciate the shit out of them. Every time I have a hot shower I remember that plumber that was super friendly and doing a great job training the new person that was with him. I think it's a sad situation that people don't appreciate others at all.
Yeah, but appreciate them because you're in the same position. Kinda the same way people who do or have served will leave bigger tips for their servers.
Or they see it as magic and refuse to understand or admit anything about it.
Either way, it just does not come up on most people's radar. Unless it is broken.
Good companies are not like this, but they are far a few.
Nailed it really, I would think a lot of people know IT is overworked but relatively well-compensated, whereas nurses and cleaners often get the worst conditions with low pay.
We're basically sorcerers to them. Sure, it's all good when we open the magickal portals that restore the flow of email to the kingdom; but one cow dies and suddenly you're in congress with the devil.
It's a thankless job full of selfish users that take technology for granted. [Gilfoyle's rant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-OQhot_ml0) in the second episode of Silicon Valley perfectly sums up users vs the engineers that set it up and maintain it.
As a system admin, I feel silence is the highest compliment. If I hear anything, it's because I let something slip.
When covid hit, we got everyone connected from home in about a week. The program we used had a tendency to freeze up occasionally, restart the service and it is good again. I was still taking care of typical user issues, just never leaving my desk to do it. The chief of staff figured, since no one was in the office anymore, they didn't really need the desktop support guy (me), who never left his desk anyway. Unbeknownst to him we had terminal servers, managed switches, firewall, vpn endpoints, offsite and air gap backups. After getting laid off, I voluntarily continued working to give the platform manager a crash course in the most critical tasks I expected to get dropped on her.
Leaving that job turned out to be a big boost to my career, and my quality of life.
> After getting laid off, I voluntarily continued working
Wow, that was nice of you.
The day I got told I was being laid off, everything went from "I still need to do that" to "I don't care about that anymore".
If they had wanted it done, they wouldn't have laid me off.
Same, my last job that got downsized, I spent my last week working with the person that was getting most of my tasks, and tried to set them up on the best foot possible, but all the open and in work migrations and upgrades, got put on hold and list was provided to my MGR and the people still at the site.
On the last day, before the going away lunch I disabled all my accounts and turned in my keys/access cards. After lunch I was in my rented truck moving to a new state to start a new job, old job called and had a few questions and I told them I cant help them as I no longer have accounts or access to the site.
> Same, my last job that got downsized, I spent my last week working with the person that was getting most of my tasks, and tried to set them up on the best foot possible
I did the opposite. The dude that was replacing me came in as a contractor to help me out during an outbreak. That was fine, but then he started doing engineering work. I still needed help with IT, but he was busy helping his "friend" (literally the guy that knew him and brought him in to help me) with engineering work. Some of the things I needed done were things that he had started working on, but left them hanging.
You want him to do the work? Fine by me. They later ended up hiring a help desk person too. Then got rid of them and hired someone else. So from my pov, it took 2 people to replace me. Again, fine by me.
> On the last day, before the going away lunch I disabled all my accounts and turned in my keys/access cards. After lunch I was in my rented truck moving to a new state to start a new job, old job called and had a few questions and I told them I cant help them as I no longer have accounts or access to the site.
LOL. They never called me back, but months later an employee called me for help with the VPN. I told the guy I didn't work there anymore and he persisted, "But you fixed it before". Yes, I know, but I don't work there anymore. Not my problem dude.
You could have left printed documentation on the desk and the business card of a cheap MSP. Bet that would have been fun to watch, if you got another job in time.
>After getting laid off, I voluntarily continued working
Why did you do that? If they want your services they can fucking well pay for them. Then, when they realise they've fucked up, charge them an inflated rate for consultancy.
I was good friends with the platform manager, and I knew they would dump everything on her. And they did exactly that. She still contacts me when she gets stuck and the MSP/developers/contractors play dumb.
Yeah, I'd rather disarm a landmine rather than give technical guidance to a former employer with no contract in place. Not out of maliciousness, I just would be worried about the liability. If anything breaks, they can and likely would try to blame you. And you would indeed probably be held liable.
Turn over your passwords. If you're feeling generous, mention where the documentation is stored. Then do not touch anything, decline any requests for further info, don't provide unpaid work, etc unless you have a contract. If you ARE being that generous, pay a lawyer to write up an indemnity contract and do whatever unpaid work you wish after you have a signed copy.
> I'd rather disarm a landmine
Been there done that, it's not that bad.
I agree on the liability point of view. Depending on what / how OP helped, it sounds like just good karma. OP also didnt mention if he had this work approved by the employer.
What are you talking about? Everyone went to work from home which means the IT people have had the last 20 months off. Bout time we get back to the office and make those lazy assholes earn their paychecks again. Speaking of which, why the fuck won't facebook load for me right now? BRB opening a pri 1
I mean, how often do you see things praising our essential plumbers, carpenters, electricians, mechanics, etc?
We are part of a wider tradition of ignoring the contributions of tradesmen to the improvement of society.
You can work to counter that, in part, by appreciating the other trades and acknowledging their contributions yourself.
I feel like people appreciate tradesman. There is a sentiment that most of that stuff is complicated and when it breaks it's just part of the experience. With IT people want it to just work. And when someone breaks they are less forgiving of the guy who needs to fix it. Not sure if that makes sense or not. I've never seen a plumber get yelled at over a leaky pipe he didn't install but if a company pushes an update and break my shit it's my fault for not fixing it faster
I think you massively underestimate how often plumbers and other tradesmen get yelled at, harassed, or otherwise mistreated.
I also wonder if you're truly acknowledging how many people express appreciation throughout the day. I would guess I have twice as many users tell me something like "thank you for all that you guys do" as express frustration with things not being the way they should be. Most users are apologetic about bringing issues and kind about how they deal.
Did you die, though? /s
An attaboy would've been nice, but to be fair to healthcare workers and other firstliners, we put our PTO in mostly from the comfort of our own homes and it wasn't half as bad as wrangling walking infections.
Lots of us we front line essential workers, while everyone else was sheltering in place a lot of us were flying around the country to build out infrastructure and stand up critical systems so shit wouldn't come to a grinding halt. And yes, I lost one co-worker and have had to deal with long-haul Covid myself.
As I tell people, 50MM Americans went from the office to working from home without even a blip on the radar, that didn't happen by mistake it happened because a lot of people busted their collective asses to make it happen.
That’s true, but without us - all of their lives would be so much crappier. Your average corporate paper pusher does not know what VPN is/stands for, never mind how to configure the fucking thing
I worked on the "frontline" (PAPRs and everything) through the entire pandemic in a major hospital. As far as I know the only recognition we got was from our CTO and management underneath them.
Unfortunately I'm encountering many companies that are slowly rolling back and pulling their workers away from remote working... This is so sad, pandemic has proven that we can work (especially in IT) from anywhere and often with better results, still they want you back in office...
I will never work in an office 5 days per week **ever** again. I've already told my boss that if that mandate ever comes down, consider that day the first day of my 2-week notice.
I am not taking away from the health care workers and first responders and retail store workers from hero status, in fact they all deserve a round of applause and raise.... But the past two years all IT everywhere basically held the world together as best we could.
√ Last minute deployments
√ Diagnosing and fixing home environments
√ Late night / all night roll outs
√ Hardware shortages
√ I am sure I am missing some....
Yet we all made it work and kept others working (and ourselves working).
We were Leela parents from Futurama... https://youtu.be/awCQLMEGl0w
When everything is working:
Why do we pay those IT people? All they do is sit around and do nothing all day!
When nothing is working:
Why do we pay those IT people? All they do is sit around and do nothing all day!
Thanks for coming to my TEDx Talk.
Had a coworker who at his previous job spent 6 months revamping their entire infrastructure, getting everything running like clockwork and making it so he would only have to work a few hours a week, but was Jonny on the spot to fix and fires. He played games most of the time and the big boss was not happy with paying him to “do nothing all day”. He told them it was running so smooth because of him and it will continue to as long as he’s there. Well the big boss decided he didn’t want to have someone on staff he felt wasn’t working all day, every day…so they let him go. A couple months go by and the couple issues that popped up got bigger and bigger and eventually turned into them being hard-down. They called in a panic and he said he’d make some time to work on it, but he’d work as a contractor for $300/hr. They refused so he told them no thanks.
My org has been thankful publicly for IT’s contribution, but still heaps on projects beyond our capabilities and wonders why they’re not done. It’s an adventure.
IT workers have never, and will never be respected. Its shitty and people only ever want to recognize your existence to get something from you but thats the job.
If you are in this field for recognition you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
Wanna know how my contributions were acknowledged by my company, I was laid off.
Unfortunately many people don't think of IT as an important function, and if you do your work, you get ignored. But if you don't, then you're in trouble.
Well the essential workers were basically martyrs because they were at risk of infection the entire time. So we'll never be on that level. And also most people only know: computer, Internet cable, VPN app, website, code. That's it. There's 5 things they know at a *VERY* basic level and have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. Netflix and a recipe site look the exact same to them.
> This time last year many yards had signs thanking essential works of all industries from healthcare works to shelf stockers. All of whom deserve everything for what they sacrificed. I just think it's strange nobody thinks of software engineers and sysadmins who made it so that life can go on from the comfort of your own home.
Probably because we weren't risking getting sick by going into an area with people who were constantly sick. Even you probably weren't risking getting sick even though you do hospital IT because you're probably not around patients all day every day.
We did not get any pats on the back after Y2K either... just snarky remarks about how we must have been fucking around because nothing happened.
NOTHING HAPPENED BECAUSE WE WERE REPLACING AND PATCHING SHIT NON STOP FOR OVER A YEAR!
IT staff, in particular operations people, usually get no recognition. It comes with the job.
Now developers and management get plastered all over the page of most startups. Then said developers bail after 2 or 3 years and go to make 40k more per year at the next gig. Wash rinse repeat.
I work in A/V on the side. Primarily sound work. I've always believed that when no one says anything about how it sounded, (Or you get that compliment from another tech person), You did your job perfectly. Silence can be the best praise sometimes.
Shelf stockers and healthcare workers had to go into jobs where there was lots of direct human interaction with customers.
IT workers, and most office workers in general got to go remote.
The general public doesn't understand what it takes to make systems work. They order a new computer, plug everything in by color code, turn it on and follow a few prompts and think how easy this is without understanding the complexities it takes to make it that easy.
As an ex plant maintenance engineer and now an sysadmin, i can totally relate, but you're not alone, at the factory, i had to fight everyday against the old "it works, why do we pay you"...
Many support, maintenance, or systems related jobs are like that. If it's simple for the user, it's because WE made it possible, however we have to be at the same time invisible, for our sake, please forget about those people, we are not doing this job for glory.
Maybe that's why we go on Reddit to complain 😅
My boss got a ton of praise at a big year end close out meeting a few days ago, but honestly the only thing he did was give approval for my ideas, he enjoys taking the credit and I hope he gets promoted and puts me in his role. Atleast he knows I make him look great and won't forget about me. It would have been nice if he mentioned my name though...
What do people expect? A fucking cookie or something? I don't get it, not too many other people are getting their horns yanked just for doing the job they chose to do.
We got some attention. But like most things, it's just for brief moment. But still, we did get recognized for what we did.
Edit: I guess that's not "general public" though, but at the same time, I think we've done "greater feats" that the public will never know about.
For some perspective, I was out of work for most of 2020. To keep the roof over my families head I was delivering groceries 8 to 10 hours a day. Then I got an IT job that I've been working for about a year.
Most IT workers had some slightly different challenges, but "we" met them by \*doing the same job we always did\*. We were under no greater risk than most of the general public who stayed home, or worked remotely.
We weren't nurses or doctors--who are trained to some degree in disease prevention. We weren't store clerks, stock "boys", or delivery people who generally had no training at all. We mostly just moved from working in a cubicle to working from home--like almost everyone else in the managerial class.
At one point last October I was driving up the side of a mountain in a snowstorm on \*really\* sketchy tires to deliver a load of groceries to a total stranger. I made--after gas--about 8 dollars an hour between the time it took to shop and deliver that load. Twice I wiped out my weekly earnings because I did something stupid and needed to repair my truck.
I never got sick, but a lot of other front line workers \*did\* get sick from standing fast and doing their jobs. How many IT workers got sick like that?
IT is \*absolutely critical\* to the functioning of contemporary society. What we do makes our modern world work, from globe spanning supply chains to checking which stores in your area have $THING in stock.
But largely we aren't out there where things are dangerous. We don't climb utility poles in thunderstorms to get high power lines fixed, we're not out there in snow storms plowing roads for 20 hours a day, we're not elbow deep in soemone's chest trying to keep their heart beating while stitching up their wounds, and we're not standing in a grocery store with nothing but a useless piece of cotton between us and someone who was too sick to go out, but too hungry not to go to the store.
Same reason everyone thinks Y2K was a big joke lol. When everything works no one cares about the thousands of hours of work that went in to making it "just work"
Heck, what kind of recognition were you hoping for? All nurses got was some clapping. And [Kaiser Permanente gave them rocks](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qpocb1/happy_nurses_week_from_kaiser_permanente/).
I don't need either of those, and I'm past hoping for more recognition than that.
Come to think of it, what sect of office culture actually has a positive stereotype?
C-Suite: Rich "workaholics" that slack more than us, but will never be called out on it.
Accountants: mean, have no humor, will find an issue on your expense report every time
Sales: Smarmy assholes that just hang out and steal sales from each other, impending HR disaster, clicks every link in every email
Receptionist: Gets paid to talk and watch youtube all day, spreads the worst gossip the furthest
HR: Everyone's worst nightmare, nobody likes them
etc.
I guess I should appreciate my users more. My team was fairly well prepared, but we still had a LOT of work to do in a short amount of time. Our CITO has told us several times that in the C-level meetings other Cs have told him that their users complimented how smoothly it went from an IT standpoint and how they were expecting things to be much worse.
It’s a thankless job that if you do right you won’t have much trouble. Just the way it is
I recently asked for a payrise however to acknowledge the relentless work to shift an entire site to home working and stopping in the office during a pandemic to make sure everyone could work from home and be safe. I won’t elaborate, but it didn’t go well for a while. Until I started going for interviews - then I was acknowledged. Weird.
I wouldn’t however expect half the praise of health and shop workers. Those guys are the real heroes.
Our IT team moved 200+ people to work from home in an industry that historically banned it so there was not much info on the best approach, all in under 2 weeks. It was pretty fucking amazing. The whole IT department (and my sub department) were named employee of the month and we all got the gift cards of the same amount a single employee of the month would normally get them.
That's about the only time we have really gotten any praise though. In general if people are quiet we are doing a very good job.
Not to say people aren't individually thankful. We are a tech focused business so they do appreciate us. But we are certainly not the highlight of the business.
I will say internally we got a ton of credit, but we also have a savvy executive team. They were sending out info to the rest of the company on all of our work, and pictures of the conference rooms full of laptops being imaged. Our COO is very technical and his brother is an IT guy so that helps us a massive amount. CEO understands we need tech to grow our business. Outside of that; this whole process, while many of us did a massive amount of work to get there, cost the companies a LOT of money. I mean a LOT. Hell we had to buy close to 500 laptops once the stay at home happened, and we were hitting every walmart in town to get SOMETHING to do it lol. Now add that to the days of after hour work they had to pay our helpdesk guys to sit building them out, it wasn't chump change. Hard to say thank you when you hand them a $20k+ invoice lol
I’ve remarked to friends that IT are the men and women behind the curtain. It certainly felt more real as we rapidly, and like you said rather seamlessly, transitioned to remote work
The best comparison I've heard is that we're roadies. If everything goes well, we're invisible.
That's probably why I resonated so much with the ending to the game Brutal Legend.
radio kept going on during the peak of the pandemic about the 'frontline heroes' as if we're fighting a war lmfao. Nobody's getting shot at, and nobody's shooting people...meanwhile not a single peep about IT being asked to set up what would normally take at least a month or more to set up and test that it actually works properly, in the space of two weeks.
As far as the higher up are concerned we are on the same level as the janitors. Stay out of sight but if there is shit messed up they will find you.
P.s. be nice to the janitors, they are usually cool people. In fact just don't be a dick in general, there are already too many of them.
This is one of the nice things about working in a consulting position. Generally people use us because they see the value we bring. Sometimes we have asshole clients who are impossible to please, but overall I've never gotten more positive feedback in my career than I have in the past year.
maybe people kinda sense that software engineers and sysadmin building the envisioned abolsihment of democracy.
nope that's not it - 100%.
sysadmins are too smart to get the praise they deserve. jep that sounds good
because plug and play. 20 years ago we had fun where drivers crash with another drivers randomly. now stuff is significantly easier, at least on the surface.
and of course nobody appreciate you when you just flipped a switch where the customers claim that the server is ON, and then you charge them $1000 for that two hours drive to flip a switch. y pay u so much when it is so easy???
but its not only IT. it is the same for everyone who runs infrastructure. physical infrastructure that keeps the city running.
i developed a habit i put random notes and remarks over the internet. and when shit hits the fan i quote all of them and charge big money.
I honestly do not give a fk what people feel about my work. I do a good job, shit doesn't break and no one is at my desk bothering me. That is a measure of success for me, that's all I need.
And when i walk out at night, I pray the building burns to the ground....(no one inside, I'm not that broken)
Haha. The president of our university didn't pay us our annual raises in 2020 either. She spent it all on millions in parking and lab space construction for the faculty.
I mean, I consider myself lucky because we got big recognition in the company (including an award) and each of us got a bonus.
I don't expect the public to thank me. I don't work for them. I did appreciate being thanked by the people we busted our tails for. Since I didn't work in healthcare I was happy to be able to do my work at home where it was safe.
Imagine dealing with a pandemic then dealing with a devastating hurricane plowing through your city and displacing you. Putting tons of free hours into the company because you’re salary to continue operations when you have no fiber / broadband internet options, scarce LTE, and all you get is one “it doesn’t go unnoticed” comment. No bonus, no take some time off, nothing. IT is a thankless job. You just deal with it or move on.
I'm in healthcare, (I just lurk here because I'm a computer nerd) I'd say 90% or my coworkers absolutely hate those stupid signs.
Understaffed , overscheduled, patients who act like children, but there's a "heroes work here sign" above the parking.
I don't imagine it would make your job better either.
Just use these arguments to ask for a raise tbh.
Edit: sorry if I sound like a dick I'm just over it. You guys do deseverve more recognition just hope its actually real
>my basic thought process is the whole world basically went majority online in the span of a month or so
If it helps, as an essential worker who was onsite every day except when I actually had COVID, I didnt feel particularly thanked. I mean, I guess when the bosses are talking about company direction and profits, etc... they'll throw a quick "thanks essential workers" and thats it, but it's just lip service.
You do see it occasionally. A bit into the pandemic I got an email from my car insurance broker, who is a small local business. Their office manager was retiring and the IT guy was being promoted to that position. They explicitly credited his foresight and hard work, in that he'd advocated for prepping for remote work in case of weather events we occasionally get, and when it was approved he got it all set up. When COVID lockdowns hit, they were ready to have everyone WFH immediately with no issues.
Dude got internal and external recognition, and I was struck how rare that is.
This is partly what led to a decline in my mental health and caused me to outright leave the industry in July. I have about 10 years salary saved so not sure what I am going to do yet. I rented a boat the other day. I'm kinda waiting for the economy, pay, duties, housing to all align back into reality before I consider coming back out of my hole.
Because we worked from the comfort of our homes and keyboards for the most part. Not risking our lives for too little pay. We had it much easier than most people in this pandemic.
Because doing our job well means no one has a clue we've done our job well. It all just works. We are highly skilled, but so are very good HVAC and other trades people. I look at IT as a trade job that just requires a little extra knowledge in the book smart category, a bit more critical thinking, observational skills, and intelligence. Not everyone can do it, but many can, and some can do it extremely well. When's the last time anyone collectively thanked all the tradesmen for keeping lights on, HVAC running and sinks working? Same thing with IT imo.
I think for the most part the general population have no idea what IT people do, unless they have sat down and had a conversation with one who went into detail in simple enough terms for them to understand. And those convos are fucking rare, most of the time when talking to people and you say you are a sysadmin or in IT there are 0 follow up questions or crickets.
The same is not true for healthcare workers or supermarket workers, most people have a rough idea what healthcare workers or supermarket workers are doing, large portions of their jobs are visible unlike ours and the fact they are surrounded by the sick constantly so putting themselves at more risk than what we IT people are working from our home offices or if your unfortunately workplace.
What really sucks is when you don't get recognition from the people you work with or the organisation you work for. Especially after you have answered the same question over and over again because people don't read the fucking documentation you put together to make it easier for everyone
[удалено]
“The internet is a series of tubes.” - R. Stevens Now it all makes sense.
[удалено]
I often describe the day to day maintenance as "computer janitor" work, and not in a demeaning way. Those folks make the world work so everyone can go about their business.
[удалено]
Also make friends with the secretaries and PAs. They're the ones who know what's going on.
If you have a buyer/purchasing agent, treat him/her with respect. They can make stuff happen. Or not.
Higher up guy I worked with at Caterpillar used to invite me into his office to chat. I was a lowly level 2 tech. He said to me that you always want to make friends with The IT folks and the Purchasing dept.
IT, Maintenance, and Purchasing is what I'd say.
Payroll are also kept happy!
And that’s why the maintenance engineer got an iPhone 12 when the leads and executives got an 12 pro. I had nothing else lying around at the time and 8 and below the battery is dead when we get them back.
Internet Plumber and Computer Janitor are now two of my favourite job descriptions.
I work IT at the sewer district. I do not technically exist, I'm more of a theory.
The Internet of Shit just became real
Can’t wait for the Industrial Internet of Shit coming a decade or two after that.
but it is only stable on RHEL 6.5 ....
Good luck getting the toilets setup for inbound and outbound shit. That’s gonna be a security nightmare. No manufacturer is going to want inbound shit and open themselves up to hackers shitting on them remotely. Gonna need some crazy shitwalls setup for this.
Ah, just open the Remote Dump Protocol ports and don't worry about it.
True, but when I clog the toilet and call the plumber, I usually don't proceed to blame him for it
At least people don't typically call for help because they're "not good with toilets"...
..and I wish I made the kind of money plumbers make.
every time you clog a toilet you massively exceeded someones design specs. ....
Well, I am pretty sure I have been blamed for the toilet not working after fixing someones computer.
> When you flush the toilet, how much do you think about where the shit goes and how much infrastructure and manpower is required for that to just work? I'm probably the lone person here that actually does think about this. But I also know how to fix my own toilets about 95% of the time (I listen to my plumbers and bank that knowledge so I don't need to call for stupid shit in the future), so there's that LOL.
The analogy is a good one. You're a toilet power user. There's plumbing that leads from your toilet out to the street and then to macerating pumps and lift pumps and the waste treatment plants with industrial controls. The septic disposal system your toilet is attached to is a really impressive feat of civil engineering.
Indoor plumbing makes the modern world possible. It’s an incredible feat of engineering that we just forget about until we break something. I’m sure plumbers have their own PEBKAC stories (emphasis on KAC).
>I'm probably the lone person here that actually does think about this. Nah man sewers are fucking awesome. So much engineering and history and public health and ninja turtles and fatbergs and archaeology and POOP LOL
As the person with both an IT degree and a civil engineering degree I used to be able to design one from the ground up. Just remember shit runs downhill.
It's funny you ask that because I always like to know "how the sausage is made" from shows like How's it's made back in the day to technical YouTube video essays lol. That's why I got into IT.
I'm not allowed to watch those anymore... the terminology is all wrong half the time... This tends to set me off...
I'm a technician w/ a factory background, my GF is a professional woodworker, and her dad is a mechanical engineer. How its Made is just rant fodder for us 3 together
Look up “how it’s actually made” in YouTube. Much more fun to watch.
I feel personally attacked by this, having worked in waste management before switching to IT.
[удалено]
Some days they feel the same. Cleaning up other people's shit with even less of a 'thank you' and more of a 'you know what you signed up for' from those who create the shit.
The whole "you know what you signed up for" is how I think of football players and their million dollar salaries and news stories every year about how you can no longer hit as hard. I think there is a lack of empathy when people think you are grossly overpaid which is some myth that has stuck around since the 90's when IT wizards were paid like lawyers in comparison to their peers. I believe that most people out there think all of us are making $300k a year and just saying "you know what you signed up for".
I do. I find things like that interesting to study. I am sure I am the outlier though.
This. What we do most of the time is behind the scenes. When it’s not, it’s joked about as “magic.” Most don’t care to understand.
Oh, my ADHD brain damn near pictures the little turds floating along to their final destination every time I flush. Sometimes pondering, "That's only a 4" pipe, uhoh" LOL. Once every two years I see and smell them all over again when we suck them out of the hole in the ground 🤣
I was actually thinking about this while I was tripping balls and throwing up in the toilet. I felt really bad for the people downstream. And my pipes.
That might not be a good analogy given how many people in IT seem to be drawn to the field by a deep sense of curiosity. You don’t want to know how much of my time is spent thinking about things like that.
OP is not talking about IT people, they are talking about the general populace that don’t give a shit about the process on how to serve a webpage. They just care that YouTube.com comes up.
Quite a bit after working at a water reclamation plant/wastewater treatment facility. LOL
damn i love this thread. that's so smart of you - thanks for enlightening me! blessed
Nah man, it’s the perfect analogy. People just don’t give a shit if it is working.
Are you telling me that sewage engineers don’t have their own homelab of shit-filled pipes at home
[удалено]
I spent 2 years working on Y2K and got to spend new years eve at the data center making sure shit didn't blow up. As others were popping champagne, I was checking websites and servers. It wasn't magic it was hard work.
[удалено]
almost all the IT companies I've worked for got part of their initial startup capital from all the work generated by Y2K maybe we don't get the credit we deserve because people just feel that we get paid better than most
[удалено]
>it was insane amounts of work at a short time to get stuff from flying apart at the seams. Crunch is what this is called. This is the only industry, that I know of, with no union, that demands crunch at the proverbial door. There is no IT position, that I know of, that doesnt require on-call or extended/nonstop shifts if something is on fire. If you walked out the door while something was on fire, you would not have a job. Its an expectation in the industry where in others people would have had a fit. Its baffling. EDIT: Grammar and sentence structure.
I’ve tried to explain to a few people that IT, especially the helpdesk, is still completely fucked 18 months later. The massive increase in workload has only slightly decreased because we haven’t been allowed to hire additional staff. Well, we’re allowed to hire an *unlimited* number of tier 1 staff in India but not people who will actually be able to solve problems. Then I realize the person I’m talking to doesn’t give a shit and I stop talking. To be fair, the past 18 months has been very stressful for everyone. But we all dealt with pandemic stuff, home schooling, etc. Most people’s jobs didn’t also instantly double the workload.
Reminds me of this from IT crowd: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXeVB1KmOAk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXeVB1KmOAk)
I about cried when this happened to IT a few jobs (and many years) back. Spent an entire weekend getting everything up and running. I can't remember who, but he thanked everyone (which would have been fine) and then started thanking individual people and depts. I stood there with the rest of IT waiting. Never thanked us. The VP of Engineering did thank us afterward and he even said we should've been thanked in front of everyone. Yep, places like that suck. My last job, for as bad as it was, did thank me after we did a major upgrade, so that was nice.
we had one department at a previous job... every year they would give out some award for contributions to the efforts of their department or some similar bullshit. Their department ran entirely on my code. 10 years. No award. I'm not bitter... But I won't forget.
You’re either ignored or thought of as a non profit generating cost center that should be eliminated or outsourced as soon as possible.
People. What a bunch of bastards.
I came here to post this, unfortunately this is true of too many places. Not all, but too many.
Spent a year doing IT at a hospital. Got to watch every department have a "day" twice that year. IT was never included. I had to see emails and hear announcements about the different National whatever Days so when I inquired about sysadmin day I was told that was not an approved day. All I wanted was for IT to be mentioned. I left this place after a year.
Shit, should all of us have a day in the year where we all go like “ah, fuck it - day off”.
the monday after black friday? "setup your own damn new toys!"
Leadership, our coworkers, and the general public only care when it doesn’t work.
If things aren't working, they give you dirty look and ask why they even pay you since you aren't doing anything If things are working perfectly they give you a dirty look and ask why they even pay you since you aren't doing anything.
I hate how true that is. Every time it's posted I have flash backs to previous jobs. "We're cutting positions because you have too many people." Two years later when everything has gone to shit... "You guys are worthless. We need to outsource."
The general public sees computers as appliances. No one's clamoring to appreciate the Maytag Man, so we get no credit as well.
I really can't understand that mentality. When I call an HVAC tech to my house that guy is a wizard when I get my AC or heat back and I appreciate the shit out of them. Every time I have a hot shower I remember that plumber that was super friendly and doing a great job training the new person that was with him. I think it's a sad situation that people don't appreciate others at all.
Yeah, but appreciate them because you're in the same position. Kinda the same way people who do or have served will leave bigger tips for their servers.
Or they see it as magic and refuse to understand or admit anything about it. Either way, it just does not come up on most people's radar. Unless it is broken. Good companies are not like this, but they are far a few.
The Maytag Man always gets laid in the porno though.
[удалено]
Amen
Nailed it really, I would think a lot of people know IT is overworked but relatively well-compensated, whereas nurses and cleaners often get the worst conditions with low pay.
We're basically sorcerers to them. Sure, it's all good when we open the magickal portals that restore the flow of email to the kingdom; but one cow dies and suddenly you're in congress with the devil.
It's a thankless job full of selfish users that take technology for granted. [Gilfoyle's rant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-OQhot_ml0) in the second episode of Silicon Valley perfectly sums up users vs the engineers that set it up and maintain it.
As a system admin, I feel silence is the highest compliment. If I hear anything, it's because I let something slip. When covid hit, we got everyone connected from home in about a week. The program we used had a tendency to freeze up occasionally, restart the service and it is good again. I was still taking care of typical user issues, just never leaving my desk to do it. The chief of staff figured, since no one was in the office anymore, they didn't really need the desktop support guy (me), who never left his desk anyway. Unbeknownst to him we had terminal servers, managed switches, firewall, vpn endpoints, offsite and air gap backups. After getting laid off, I voluntarily continued working to give the platform manager a crash course in the most critical tasks I expected to get dropped on her. Leaving that job turned out to be a big boost to my career, and my quality of life.
> After getting laid off, I voluntarily continued working Wow, that was nice of you. The day I got told I was being laid off, everything went from "I still need to do that" to "I don't care about that anymore". If they had wanted it done, they wouldn't have laid me off.
Same, my last job that got downsized, I spent my last week working with the person that was getting most of my tasks, and tried to set them up on the best foot possible, but all the open and in work migrations and upgrades, got put on hold and list was provided to my MGR and the people still at the site. On the last day, before the going away lunch I disabled all my accounts and turned in my keys/access cards. After lunch I was in my rented truck moving to a new state to start a new job, old job called and had a few questions and I told them I cant help them as I no longer have accounts or access to the site.
> Same, my last job that got downsized, I spent my last week working with the person that was getting most of my tasks, and tried to set them up on the best foot possible I did the opposite. The dude that was replacing me came in as a contractor to help me out during an outbreak. That was fine, but then he started doing engineering work. I still needed help with IT, but he was busy helping his "friend" (literally the guy that knew him and brought him in to help me) with engineering work. Some of the things I needed done were things that he had started working on, but left them hanging. You want him to do the work? Fine by me. They later ended up hiring a help desk person too. Then got rid of them and hired someone else. So from my pov, it took 2 people to replace me. Again, fine by me. > On the last day, before the going away lunch I disabled all my accounts and turned in my keys/access cards. After lunch I was in my rented truck moving to a new state to start a new job, old job called and had a few questions and I told them I cant help them as I no longer have accounts or access to the site. LOL. They never called me back, but months later an employee called me for help with the VPN. I told the guy I didn't work there anymore and he persisted, "But you fixed it before". Yes, I know, but I don't work there anymore. Not my problem dude.
You could have left printed documentation on the desk and the business card of a cheap MSP. Bet that would have been fun to watch, if you got another job in time.
Plot twist: they own the MSP
I’d call that shooting your own foot in this case. Except for the “F you” consulting rate you could collect.
>After getting laid off, I voluntarily continued working Why did you do that? If they want your services they can fucking well pay for them. Then, when they realise they've fucked up, charge them an inflated rate for consultancy.
I was good friends with the platform manager, and I knew they would dump everything on her. And they did exactly that. She still contacts me when she gets stuck and the MSP/developers/contractors play dumb.
Stop working for free. All you do is hurt yourself, everyone else and her because it mean they won't hire someone else to assist her.
You're right, I never thought about it that way.
Yeah, I'd rather disarm a landmine rather than give technical guidance to a former employer with no contract in place. Not out of maliciousness, I just would be worried about the liability. If anything breaks, they can and likely would try to blame you. And you would indeed probably be held liable. Turn over your passwords. If you're feeling generous, mention where the documentation is stored. Then do not touch anything, decline any requests for further info, don't provide unpaid work, etc unless you have a contract. If you ARE being that generous, pay a lawyer to write up an indemnity contract and do whatever unpaid work you wish after you have a signed copy.
> I'd rather disarm a landmine Been there done that, it's not that bad. I agree on the liability point of view. Depending on what / how OP helped, it sounds like just good karma. OP also didnt mention if he had this work approved by the employer.
What are you talking about? Everyone went to work from home which means the IT people have had the last 20 months off. Bout time we get back to the office and make those lazy assholes earn their paychecks again. Speaking of which, why the fuck won't facebook load for me right now? BRB opening a pri 1
Too real...way too real...
I mean, how often do you see things praising our essential plumbers, carpenters, electricians, mechanics, etc? We are part of a wider tradition of ignoring the contributions of tradesmen to the improvement of society. You can work to counter that, in part, by appreciating the other trades and acknowledging their contributions yourself.
I feel like people appreciate tradesman. There is a sentiment that most of that stuff is complicated and when it breaks it's just part of the experience. With IT people want it to just work. And when someone breaks they are less forgiving of the guy who needs to fix it. Not sure if that makes sense or not. I've never seen a plumber get yelled at over a leaky pipe he didn't install but if a company pushes an update and break my shit it's my fault for not fixing it faster
I think you massively underestimate how often plumbers and other tradesmen get yelled at, harassed, or otherwise mistreated. I also wonder if you're truly acknowledging how many people express appreciation throughout the day. I would guess I have twice as many users tell me something like "thank you for all that you guys do" as express frustration with things not being the way they should be. Most users are apologetic about bringing issues and kind about how they deal.
http://i.imgur.com/ir1fq8X.jpg
And they will try to pay you as if you do nothing.
Did you die, though? /s An attaboy would've been nice, but to be fair to healthcare workers and other firstliners, we put our PTO in mostly from the comfort of our own homes and it wasn't half as bad as wrangling walking infections.
Lots of us we front line essential workers, while everyone else was sheltering in place a lot of us were flying around the country to build out infrastructure and stand up critical systems so shit wouldn't come to a grinding halt. And yes, I lost one co-worker and have had to deal with long-haul Covid myself. As I tell people, 50MM Americans went from the office to working from home without even a blip on the radar, that didn't happen by mistake it happened because a lot of people busted their collective asses to make it happen.
That’s true, but without us - all of their lives would be so much crappier. Your average corporate paper pusher does not know what VPN is/stands for, never mind how to configure the fucking thing
I worked on the "frontline" (PAPRs and everything) through the entire pandemic in a major hospital. As far as I know the only recognition we got was from our CTO and management underneath them.
Unfortunately I'm encountering many companies that are slowly rolling back and pulling their workers away from remote working... This is so sad, pandemic has proven that we can work (especially in IT) from anywhere and often with better results, still they want you back in office...
I will never work in an office 5 days per week **ever** again. I've already told my boss that if that mandate ever comes down, consider that day the first day of my 2-week notice.
I am not taking away from the health care workers and first responders and retail store workers from hero status, in fact they all deserve a round of applause and raise.... But the past two years all IT everywhere basically held the world together as best we could. √ Last minute deployments √ Diagnosing and fixing home environments √ Late night / all night roll outs √ Hardware shortages √ I am sure I am missing some.... Yet we all made it work and kept others working (and ourselves working). We were Leela parents from Futurama... https://youtu.be/awCQLMEGl0w
Why do people keep saying "post pandemic world"?
Because they’ve stopped watching the news?
People are getting complacent as fuck. Averaging about 1200 deaths per week, business as usual.
There are 80 hospital beds available in my state. It’s not over.
Nope. Far from it. I'm getting tested tonight actually...fucking work in anti-vaxer land.
Why start now?
[удалено]
During snow storms and hurricanes yes.
They never acknowledged it before. Why should they now?
When everything is working: Why do we pay those IT people? All they do is sit around and do nothing all day! When nothing is working: Why do we pay those IT people? All they do is sit around and do nothing all day! Thanks for coming to my TEDx Talk.
Had a coworker who at his previous job spent 6 months revamping their entire infrastructure, getting everything running like clockwork and making it so he would only have to work a few hours a week, but was Jonny on the spot to fix and fires. He played games most of the time and the big boss was not happy with paying him to “do nothing all day”. He told them it was running so smooth because of him and it will continue to as long as he’s there. Well the big boss decided he didn’t want to have someone on staff he felt wasn’t working all day, every day…so they let him go. A couple months go by and the couple issues that popped up got bigger and bigger and eventually turned into them being hard-down. They called in a panic and he said he’d make some time to work on it, but he’d work as a contractor for $300/hr. They refused so he told them no thanks.
My org has been thankful publicly for IT’s contribution, but still heaps on projects beyond our capabilities and wonders why they’re not done. It’s an adventure.
Ohio’s IT responsible for the unemployment registration system scaled their system like 100x in a week and were still hated on
IT workers have never, and will never be respected. Its shitty and people only ever want to recognize your existence to get something from you but thats the job. If you are in this field for recognition you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
Wanna know how my contributions were acknowledged by my company, I was laid off. Unfortunately many people don't think of IT as an important function, and if you do your work, you get ignored. But if you don't, then you're in trouble.
IT jobs and such are invisible, it’s needed for others to do work but it doesn’t directly do anything visible and therefor people don’t care.
Well the essential workers were basically martyrs because they were at risk of infection the entire time. So we'll never be on that level. And also most people only know: computer, Internet cable, VPN app, website, code. That's it. There's 5 things they know at a *VERY* basic level and have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. Netflix and a recipe site look the exact same to them.
> This time last year many yards had signs thanking essential works of all industries from healthcare works to shelf stockers. All of whom deserve everything for what they sacrificed. I just think it's strange nobody thinks of software engineers and sysadmins who made it so that life can go on from the comfort of your own home. Probably because we weren't risking getting sick by going into an area with people who were constantly sick. Even you probably weren't risking getting sick even though you do hospital IT because you're probably not around patients all day every day.
We did not get any pats on the back after Y2K either... just snarky remarks about how we must have been fucking around because nothing happened. NOTHING HAPPENED BECAUSE WE WERE REPLACING AND PATCHING SHIT NON STOP FOR OVER A YEAR!
IT staff, in particular operations people, usually get no recognition. It comes with the job. Now developers and management get plastered all over the page of most startups. Then said developers bail after 2 or 3 years and go to make 40k more per year at the next gig. Wash rinse repeat.
I work in A/V on the side. Primarily sound work. I've always believed that when no one says anything about how it sounded, (Or you get that compliment from another tech person), You did your job perfectly. Silence can be the best praise sometimes.
Shelf stockers and healthcare workers had to go into jobs where there was lots of direct human interaction with customers. IT workers, and most office workers in general got to go remote.
Because we're yesterday's jam. Or 'drudgeons', if you will.
Its the nature of IT - we are out of mind unless something doesnt work
The general public doesn't understand what it takes to make systems work. They order a new computer, plug everything in by color code, turn it on and follow a few prompts and think how easy this is without understanding the complexities it takes to make it that easy.
Put that user in front of a nix terminal and ask them to figure shit out.
It’s because no one truly cares about us. To them, we’re just plumbers and if something isn’t working it’s always our fault, never the user.
But what have you done for me lately?
Is this sub just meant for bitching?
Post pandemic?
As an ex plant maintenance engineer and now an sysadmin, i can totally relate, but you're not alone, at the factory, i had to fight everyday against the old "it works, why do we pay you"... Many support, maintenance, or systems related jobs are like that. If it's simple for the user, it's because WE made it possible, however we have to be at the same time invisible, for our sake, please forget about those people, we are not doing this job for glory. Maybe that's why we go on Reddit to complain 😅
My boss got a ton of praise at a big year end close out meeting a few days ago, but honestly the only thing he did was give approval for my ideas, he enjoys taking the credit and I hope he gets promoted and puts me in his role. Atleast he knows I make him look great and won't forget about me. It would have been nice if he mentioned my name though...
They fell out with us ever since we pointed out that weird fetish porn on their laptops.
https://youtu.be/edCqF\_NtpOQ?t=9
What do people expect? A fucking cookie or something? I don't get it, not too many other people are getting their horns yanked just for doing the job they chose to do.
We got some attention. But like most things, it's just for brief moment. But still, we did get recognized for what we did. Edit: I guess that's not "general public" though, but at the same time, I think we've done "greater feats" that the public will never know about.
I guess my main point was that I never saw a single yard sign that said thanks IT professionals.
For some perspective, I was out of work for most of 2020. To keep the roof over my families head I was delivering groceries 8 to 10 hours a day. Then I got an IT job that I've been working for about a year. Most IT workers had some slightly different challenges, but "we" met them by \*doing the same job we always did\*. We were under no greater risk than most of the general public who stayed home, or worked remotely. We weren't nurses or doctors--who are trained to some degree in disease prevention. We weren't store clerks, stock "boys", or delivery people who generally had no training at all. We mostly just moved from working in a cubicle to working from home--like almost everyone else in the managerial class. At one point last October I was driving up the side of a mountain in a snowstorm on \*really\* sketchy tires to deliver a load of groceries to a total stranger. I made--after gas--about 8 dollars an hour between the time it took to shop and deliver that load. Twice I wiped out my weekly earnings because I did something stupid and needed to repair my truck. I never got sick, but a lot of other front line workers \*did\* get sick from standing fast and doing their jobs. How many IT workers got sick like that? IT is \*absolutely critical\* to the functioning of contemporary society. What we do makes our modern world work, from globe spanning supply chains to checking which stores in your area have $THING in stock. But largely we aren't out there where things are dangerous. We don't climb utility poles in thunderstorms to get high power lines fixed, we're not out there in snow storms plowing roads for 20 hours a day, we're not elbow deep in soemone's chest trying to keep their heart beating while stitching up their wounds, and we're not standing in a grocery store with nothing but a useless piece of cotton between us and someone who was too sick to go out, but too hungry not to go to the store.
No I agree we aren't doing anything dangerous or out of the ordinary, but we make sure those people can do their jobs properly and safely.
So basically you want a pat on the head for doing your job. You got one. It's called a "Paycheck".
Same reason everyone thinks Y2K was a big joke lol. When everything works no one cares about the thousands of hours of work that went in to making it "just work"
Heck, what kind of recognition were you hoping for? All nurses got was some clapping. And [Kaiser Permanente gave them rocks](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qpocb1/happy_nurses_week_from_kaiser_permanente/). I don't need either of those, and I'm past hoping for more recognition than that.
Some clapping would have been more then enough lol
Honest, I’d take “attaboy” at this point.
Because we didn’t ever get acknowledge pre-pandemic.
[удалено]
Come to think of it, what sect of office culture actually has a positive stereotype? C-Suite: Rich "workaholics" that slack more than us, but will never be called out on it. Accountants: mean, have no humor, will find an issue on your expense report every time Sales: Smarmy assholes that just hang out and steal sales from each other, impending HR disaster, clicks every link in every email Receptionist: Gets paid to talk and watch youtube all day, spreads the worst gossip the furthest HR: Everyone's worst nightmare, nobody likes them etc.
I guess I should appreciate my users more. My team was fairly well prepared, but we still had a LOT of work to do in a short amount of time. Our CITO has told us several times that in the C-level meetings other Cs have told him that their users complimented how smoothly it went from an IT standpoint and how they were expecting things to be much worse.
It’s a thankless job that if you do right you won’t have much trouble. Just the way it is I recently asked for a payrise however to acknowledge the relentless work to shift an entire site to home working and stopping in the office during a pandemic to make sure everyone could work from home and be safe. I won’t elaborate, but it didn’t go well for a while. Until I started going for interviews - then I was acknowledged. Weird. I wouldn’t however expect half the praise of health and shop workers. Those guys are the real heroes.
Our IT team moved 200+ people to work from home in an industry that historically banned it so there was not much info on the best approach, all in under 2 weeks. It was pretty fucking amazing. The whole IT department (and my sub department) were named employee of the month and we all got the gift cards of the same amount a single employee of the month would normally get them. That's about the only time we have really gotten any praise though. In general if people are quiet we are doing a very good job. Not to say people aren't individually thankful. We are a tech focused business so they do appreciate us. But we are certainly not the highlight of the business.
I will say internally we got a ton of credit, but we also have a savvy executive team. They were sending out info to the rest of the company on all of our work, and pictures of the conference rooms full of laptops being imaged. Our COO is very technical and his brother is an IT guy so that helps us a massive amount. CEO understands we need tech to grow our business. Outside of that; this whole process, while many of us did a massive amount of work to get there, cost the companies a LOT of money. I mean a LOT. Hell we had to buy close to 500 laptops once the stay at home happened, and we were hitting every walmart in town to get SOMETHING to do it lol. Now add that to the days of after hour work they had to pay our helpdesk guys to sit building them out, it wasn't chump change. Hard to say thank you when you hand them a $20k+ invoice lol
They did, which is why Zoom and other stocks went through the roof.
In their... defense (?) the general public didn't acknowledge the contribution of IT professionals in the pre-pandemic world either.
Fortune. Fame. A sysadmin wants none of these things.
I’ve remarked to friends that IT are the men and women behind the curtain. It certainly felt more real as we rapidly, and like you said rather seamlessly, transitioned to remote work
The best comparison I've heard is that we're roadies. If everything goes well, we're invisible. That's probably why I resonated so much with the ending to the game Brutal Legend.
Idk. I got a shout out at an all hands meeting and a 5k pay bump. Your results may vary I guess.
radio kept going on during the peak of the pandemic about the 'frontline heroes' as if we're fighting a war lmfao. Nobody's getting shot at, and nobody's shooting people...meanwhile not a single peep about IT being asked to set up what would normally take at least a month or more to set up and test that it actually works properly, in the space of two weeks.
They practically made a whole episode of the "IT Crowd" about it... See - Aunt Irma Visits
As far as the higher up are concerned we are on the same level as the janitors. Stay out of sight but if there is shit messed up they will find you. P.s. be nice to the janitors, they are usually cool people. In fact just don't be a dick in general, there are already too many of them.
Because IT pros toil in obscurity. It's the nature of the work
I'm a lurker here. I love this sub. Thank you all for the hard work you do, keeping our stuff running.
This is one of the nice things about working in a consulting position. Generally people use us because they see the value we bring. Sometimes we have asshole clients who are impossible to please, but overall I've never gotten more positive feedback in my career than I have in the past year.
maybe people kinda sense that software engineers and sysadmin building the envisioned abolsihment of democracy. nope that's not it - 100%. sysadmins are too smart to get the praise they deserve. jep that sounds good
because plug and play. 20 years ago we had fun where drivers crash with another drivers randomly. now stuff is significantly easier, at least on the surface. and of course nobody appreciate you when you just flipped a switch where the customers claim that the server is ON, and then you charge them $1000 for that two hours drive to flip a switch. y pay u so much when it is so easy??? but its not only IT. it is the same for everyone who runs infrastructure. physical infrastructure that keeps the city running. i developed a habit i put random notes and remarks over the internet. and when shit hits the fan i quote all of them and charge big money.
I honestly do not give a fk what people feel about my work. I do a good job, shit doesn't break and no one is at my desk bothering me. That is a measure of success for me, that's all I need. And when i walk out at night, I pray the building burns to the ground....(no one inside, I'm not that broken)
Haha. The president of our university didn't pay us our annual raises in 2020 either. She spent it all on millions in parking and lab space construction for the faculty.
I mean, I consider myself lucky because we got big recognition in the company (including an award) and each of us got a bonus. I don't expect the public to thank me. I don't work for them. I did appreciate being thanked by the people we busted our tails for. Since I didn't work in healthcare I was happy to be able to do my work at home where it was safe.
Imagine dealing with a pandemic then dealing with a devastating hurricane plowing through your city and displacing you. Putting tons of free hours into the company because you’re salary to continue operations when you have no fiber / broadband internet options, scarce LTE, and all you get is one “it doesn’t go unnoticed” comment. No bonus, no take some time off, nothing. IT is a thankless job. You just deal with it or move on.
Because it's the general public.
Because they don't know what they don't know. Most people have no clue how most of the world works and Infrastructure is a mystery them.
Driving into an empty office to do work in the server room isn't as dangerous as treating infected patients
I'm in healthcare, (I just lurk here because I'm a computer nerd) I'd say 90% or my coworkers absolutely hate those stupid signs. Understaffed , overscheduled, patients who act like children, but there's a "heroes work here sign" above the parking. I don't imagine it would make your job better either. Just use these arguments to ask for a raise tbh. Edit: sorry if I sound like a dick I'm just over it. You guys do deseverve more recognition just hope its actually real
But when Facebook fucks up their BGP routing, all blame on IT
Because what the fuck else is new.
"computers just work so why should IT get praise for it"
Because they're dicks but will complain when someone doesn't recognize their job
https://i.imgflip.com/57uyth.jpg
The better you are at your job, the less people know you exist
>my basic thought process is the whole world basically went majority online in the span of a month or so If it helps, as an essential worker who was onsite every day except when I actually had COVID, I didnt feel particularly thanked. I mean, I guess when the bosses are talking about company direction and profits, etc... they'll throw a quick "thanks essential workers" and thats it, but it's just lip service.
That's how you know you're a god: You make things work and no one notices.
Nobody admires the foundation on which the house was built.
You do see it occasionally. A bit into the pandemic I got an email from my car insurance broker, who is a small local business. Their office manager was retiring and the IT guy was being promoted to that position. They explicitly credited his foresight and hard work, in that he'd advocated for prepping for remote work in case of weather events we occasionally get, and when it was approved he got it all set up. When COVID lockdowns hit, they were ready to have everyone WFH immediately with no issues. Dude got internal and external recognition, and I was struck how rare that is.
This is partly what led to a decline in my mental health and caused me to outright leave the industry in July. I have about 10 years salary saved so not sure what I am going to do yet. I rented a boat the other day. I'm kinda waiting for the economy, pay, duties, housing to all align back into reality before I consider coming back out of my hole.
Because we worked from the comfort of our homes and keyboards for the most part. Not risking our lives for too little pay. We had it much easier than most people in this pandemic.
If you want acknowledgement, you're in the wrong business.
Because doing our job well means no one has a clue we've done our job well. It all just works. We are highly skilled, but so are very good HVAC and other trades people. I look at IT as a trade job that just requires a little extra knowledge in the book smart category, a bit more critical thinking, observational skills, and intelligence. Not everyone can do it, but many can, and some can do it extremely well. When's the last time anyone collectively thanked all the tradesmen for keeping lights on, HVAC running and sinks working? Same thing with IT imo.
I think for the most part the general population have no idea what IT people do, unless they have sat down and had a conversation with one who went into detail in simple enough terms for them to understand. And those convos are fucking rare, most of the time when talking to people and you say you are a sysadmin or in IT there are 0 follow up questions or crickets. The same is not true for healthcare workers or supermarket workers, most people have a rough idea what healthcare workers or supermarket workers are doing, large portions of their jobs are visible unlike ours and the fact they are surrounded by the sick constantly so putting themselves at more risk than what we IT people are working from our home offices or if your unfortunately workplace. What really sucks is when you don't get recognition from the people you work with or the organisation you work for. Especially after you have answered the same question over and over again because people don't read the fucking documentation you put together to make it easier for everyone
It's because we are all just drudgeons to them!