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As a junior technician I've had to deal with (or will have to deal with) some problems in the past and only being a junior technician I don't have the confidence or respect from management staff to speak up.

For instance, we're having a entirely new system. From Windows Server 2003/XP going to Windows Server 2008 R2/Windows 7/VMWare/Digital Signage and the current amount of time dedicated to the training of the IT support department currently stands at 0. They seem to think that all IT systems are the same and are going to get a bit of shock when I can't help them.

I think there's some UK legislation saying a school/business have to put money and time aside for training, but I'm not sure.

What have you had to deal with?

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The worst management decision was "We decided to lay you off." Although looking back, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. – Stefan Lasiewski Jun 17 '10 at 3:16
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6 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

I liked the company I was working for, but my management were reluctant to promote me (and other people).

So I had an interview and got a job offer at another company, then showed this to my manager. 20 minutes later was promised a promotion and a salary to beat that of the other job.

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This can blow back at you - depending on the management, they may think of you as a flight risk after this point. It doesn't always happen, but you need to think about the possibility of them letting you go in another 3-6 months after you accept their counteroffer. – mfinni May 27 '10 at 13:15
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I did that about 8 years ago and it was a very good move for me at the time. I was with the company for a further 4 years (and got promoted another 3 times in those 4 years which was pretty good going!). If it did turn out bad after a few months, I would have left. So in short I had nothing to lose by employing this tactic :-) – Techboy May 27 '10 at 16:03
My girlfriend did it as well, also with very good results. My point is simply that one must be prepared for it to go badly. – mfinni May 27 '10 at 16:48
Speak to some people in management. You'll find out that this strategy was how they became a manager. Really, it's not a ploy-- it's a necessity. Most of us are 'at will' employees and can be terminated or quit at any time. If another employer offers you something better, you need to consider it for yourself, for your family, for your career. This is business. – Stefan Lasiewski Jun 17 '10 at 3:20
I had a similar experience that I walked away from. I left a job immediately before a corporate buyout because the pay sucked and the on-call was out of control. My boss kept giving me the runaround about a promised raise. The day after I left, I get a package in the mail with my 15,000 share option award and 30% raise. The stock would have been worth $250k at vesting time :) I ended up sending my old boss a thank you and we had a good laugh over it. – duffbeer703 Jun 17 '10 at 4:52
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up vote 2 down vote

The real question is where to start?

  1. Setting the schedule for a multi-month project they've been tossing back and forth for months deciding how to implement before they bother telling the people who have to implement it. And not understanding that the old software ran on Solaris 6 or 7 ... and the new software ran on 6 or 8 ... and we were running Solaris 7. And they didn't want to buy us enough hardware to roll through the systems to replace components (~20 system mail server) so we didn't have to back down the OS, install new software, then upgrade the OS.
  2. Not consulting with the system and network administrators for a power outage to install a power transfer switch affecting the whole data center (~300 systems) ... we showed up at their meeting about 2 weeks before (only because our new manager had no clue what was going on and decided we should go, even though upper management hadn't invited us). And our aged terminal server that I had been trying to get replaced with a real console server crapped itself, so we had to bring up the systems using two impromptu crash carts
  3. Forcing us to wait 'til 6pm before we take down the SAN that started acting flaky around noon. It went down on its own near 4pm, and we spent more than 2 weeks around the clock trying to fix it before they told us to pull the plug.
  4. Hiring people who weren't skilled to do their jobs, and not replacing them when even after training, they're still not qualified to do their job. (that last item? caused by a sysadmin who pulled two drives from a RAID5 group at once)
  5. Buying the hardware without looking at the specs of the software it's going to be running. (when the software's single-threaded, buying 4-processor systems wasn't as useful as buying 2x as many 2 processor systems)
  6. Chartering a special class to train people on the new software, and sending 2/3 of the office to it ... but not the two people who'd be administering the new software, because they have to manage the old system while everyone else is in class.
  7. Telling the sysadmins that we were to take orders from any management in our department in an emergency. (and never answered when I asked if it was me, or one of the ~50 managers/directors/etc who got to decide if it was an emergency or not)
  8. Telling the project manager to harass me 'til I quit, but then having a short enough temper that when I said I'd turn in my resignation by the end of the day and storming out of his office, coming into my office and having me thrown out. (DC unemployment office sided with me that I was fired)

...

um, I'd link to the exit letter I sent to the CIO after getting fired with my other list of complaints, as I know I had a lot more complaints than that, but it seems that my old ISP isn't serving my domain anymore, and it never made it into archive.org ... crap.

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up vote 1 down vote

In the current financial climate and with the change of government in the UK training is one of the things that has fallen by the wayside. If the school you work for has Training School status you may well have a training co-ordinator whom you can approach and ask about training oppertunities.

That said, I have always struggled to actually get any formal training through the schools budgets. You may get more mileage asking for books. I would suggest you approach your line manager and explain that you are concerned that you skill level isn't high enough to support the school, try and get some resources to learn from in the form of books or online training. If possible get a certain percentage of your time set aside for training each day, so you can work through the resources and "skill up".

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We do have a training co-ordinator, but it seems only for the teaching and admin staff. My line manager is also aware of the lack of training and shares my concern and frustration. Thanks for the Microsoft link, I'll look into that. – tombull89 May 27 '10 at 10:41
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If you're in the UK education sector, have you looked at Edugeek? Good resources there for a lot of thing, including cheap training. – DJ Pon3 May 27 '10 at 17:01
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up vote 1 down vote

In the perfect world, the relationship between employer\employee is mutually assistive and mutually beneficial. They assist and benefit you by offering guidance, training, and education and that benefits them by making you a better educated, more productive employee. Rarely does it actually work out that way.

My personal philosophy is that my professional success depends on me alone and is my responsibility alone. I've never waited for my employer or my boss to "push" me along the path or up the ladder. It's my career and therefore my responsibility.

While you might not like the fact that your employer is deaf and blind to the nuances of helping their employees progress, at the end of the day it rests on your shoulders. My advice is that you should go find what you need in regards to training and take it upon yourself to pursue it.

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up vote 0 down vote

Don't think about it until you are the part of management. They are not there to listen to you when there are a lot of people whispering "GREAT" ideas in their ears.

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up vote 0 down vote

I'm not going to point out specific management decisions as oftentimes individual decisions are the best or "least negative" options that can be made. As a manager, I've been forced by circumstance to make decisions that to the staff may seem arbitrary or really dumb. Usually it's the better of two evils.

I'm not happy with it, but I don't control the world.

The stuff that bothers me is generally systemic:

  • Making commitments in a vacuum.
  • Allowing a culture that accepts mediocrity to thrive.
  • Publicly recognizing what I call "phoney baloney heroics" that never should be allowed to happen.
  • Making major procurement decisions without gathering requirements or conducting a substantive evaluation.
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