10 years ago "the IT guy" was like the headmaster, nowadays he's basically a janitor with a keyboard.
Apple is not going out of business. The "popularity" of IE is going out. Entire public schools are getting computer labs full of Mac's. Duke University now passes out iPods to their students for them to use it as a hard drive and copy lessons using microphone attachments. In the last quarter alone, Apple made a net profit of $290 Million. Compare that to a year ago, same quarter in which the net profit was $46 Million, a 530% increase. Sheer revenue from the company increased by 70% up to 3.24 Billion. They sold over 1 million computers and over 5 million ipods in the last quarter alone. And at my local Apple store, when the new OS got released (10.4) last week, there was a line in the mall that was 6 stores long. I, for one, am buying Apple stock, not because I work for them, but because SO many people are joining the Mac "Cult".
Personally I have found that many many IT people make their own problems and frankly not enough of them take the time to learn the new stuff that they are forced to use so they are wasteing countless hours of time that they should be spending educating their user base and advocating for new approaches to old busines sproblems. I STILL meet people who have SPAM, spyware and Virus problems at their locations. The solutions to these problems are well documented. IT guys are janitors with keyboards? HA. If you aren't adding enough value to be considered the go-to guys on the level of the companies lawyer you're not doing something right for the owners.
Not to sound disrespectful, but this sounds exactly like someone in marketing or sales that was thrown into IT management. Do IT people create their own problems? Nope. Most of the time we are thrown complex situations and incompatible software and told "make it work". Thus, creating the issue is created by the management that defines the practice by the decisions they make with the buzzwords and nominal understanding they have. While some do great, and some are highly experienced, typically, it comes down to middle mis-management and untechnical managers overseeing IT.
I'd argue that there are far to many front line network admins / systems people not being "people/business oriented" and not having enough real world experience to make the correct recommendations or worse are so aloof that they don't even bother to recognize the problems and take the time to fix them for good the first time. I spend most of my days cleaning up after the textbook mcse's of the world who spent to much time playing quake then acctually monitoring their systems. Is management to blame? Not often. Ussually they go with their short sighted IT staffs recommendations. If you come up against the type of mangement you mentioned above just move on as they view you as nothing but a cost center anyway. And no I am not a marketing person who was thrown into IT. However, I do try to take much more positive oulook towards the work then most of my peers do. It has helped me a great deal through the years.
Good response and I do agree with this line of thought as well. Most IT people, even myself when I'm in 5th gear tech mode, am not business oriented. The blame shouldn't be on one side or another, but a compromise. Management should understand that "server down" doesn't mean I can fix it in 15 minutes when another system must be built up and the data migrated. The time to fix problems properly should be under the motto - fix it right the first time; fix it once.
Speaking for IT fuk-ups. As OF 6:52 PM ET GOOGLE is completely down. You can almost hear the revenue being lost as I type. Its a dns error. you can still get there via the IP
Oh so far from the truth. On Mac's, there is no right click. AH-HA, fix that one! Actually, the right click in the Mac world is pretty powerful. Try holding down the option key then clicking and see all the options that are available. For some unknown reason, macs continue to ship with single button mice. What's interesting about IT/MIS depts is that they usually are quite anti-mac. Its not in their realm of knowledge or expertise so its easier to pooh pooh then and discourage the users. A friend of mine did an informal survey of IT asking them how many mac user they thought were in the company. He got responces from 15 to 50. It turns out there were over 150 mac users. IT was so used to ignoring them, they became self sustaining. Once again speaking to the ease of use issues. Show me a group of 150 pc users that isn't bothering IT on a daily basis. Its also easy for IT to try to ignore these guys because they usually are on the creative side. i have fought many battles for mac users in pc environments Now that the Mac OS has gone to a unix core, there are even less reasons to complain about it. Apple has gone to great pains to ensure adherance to accepted standards. The problem, Microsoft doesn't, it wants to create the standards (look at java) This is also a way to ensure employment. The problem with mac and IT, they can't BS the users with double speak. Normally its just accepted and you grin and bear it, waiting on the IT dudes to solve the problem. At my current company, in 18 months, I have not had 1 single Mac virus ticket. On the pc side? forget about it. Our biggest problem is when it comes to corporate systems. If the app doesn't work on a Mac, we start a remote desktop session which essentially starts a win 2000 session, and run the app from there. sometimes clunky but it works. On the cost side, the complaint has always been, Macs cost too much. If you look at the ROI and man hours to support, the Macs stay on line longer, with less problems and the user are more productive. I have converted quite a number of users from pc to mac here at work. Mostly people that have never used one before. Every single transition has been smooth. The users are able to jump right into the game and do their jobs. And that is what it all is about. My computer is a tool, an asset. Something I use to do my job. It shouldn't dictate how I have to do my job. It should work for me. But I can't play all my games on a mac. If you have an IT dept, you are working at a company where you shouldn't be playing games plus, with the unix core, porting games over is easier. Speaking of UNIX, I have come to know quite a number of hard core UNIX guys that are coming over to the mac. You can get as deep into the code as you want or on the other side, you never have to go there if you don't want to. But I'm sure that Longhorn, when and if it ever gets release, will solve all these problems in a smooth and efficient manner... Yah right! : ) kcv
My first IT gig.. way way back when i got out of school was helpdesk for dell and MSN.. it was pretty funny.. the guys that were new and didnt know anything.. had a standard answer for every call. 1. defrag 2. scan disk 3. reboot. 4. (because this process takes about 30 minutes to a gillion hours.. call back when its through).. They would call back and get another tech.. so the original tech was off the hook.. anyway.. it was pretty funny back then.
no, it wasn't funny. and when I was at dell, during the golden years of splits and such, we called those types "day shifters". at night, if you punt a call like that, you'll end up with the same caller a few hours later since we were a skeleton crew. being in the skeleton crew taught you a lot more than what the day shifters put up with. "reinstall and call back..." was not the right answer.
I am a mac (mac daddy though) hey i am IT + dev here.. and no shifts for me .. only software dude.. so i am on 24 7.. fun stuff.. u can install oracle.. ? I bow to theee.!!!
Well I have been doing it for sometime. I love helping people so it is not a problem for me. I now own my own company. I employ now 22 techs. We do Network Security, and and all the normal stuff. But we are now venturing to web design. I worked for 2advanced.com for some time as a designer, and for the longest time I felt somthing missing in this field of mine.. Creativity. Sure I can weave my way through Fedora Core better then the designers, but thats not fun. So right now I am hiring some new people to help with this venture. So now the business will offer something that most dont. We will offer everything including simple tech, to security, design, and tutoring for business's, and large groups. I love doing it. I love being my own boss. I have had my experiences in working with many companies in the past, and I hate dealing with 4 to 5 bosses and dealing with all there crap. So i started this. If you live in Oregon you probably have heard our ads on the radio, and at most century theatres. www.thegeekery.biz, site is under re-construction. Would suggest this field for anyone.
what do you mean "this field"? i was always the nerd of the family, and in the 90's i spent many hours every week helping family/friends/people-who'd-heard-of-me through traumatic computer issues, mostly by phone, and mostly painfully taking an hour to instruct someone how to do something i coulda done in under 5 minutes sitting at their pooter. after the millionth time having to explain the difference between memory and disk space coz someone bought something they didn't have enough memory for ("but my machine has a 200 meg memory drive" ) i decided i didn't want a career in I.T. this was back in the days of "high memory area", "expanded memory" and "extended memory"... wot a nightmare.
I am so ready to go "Michael Bolton" on the computers here at the office. If anybody has any advanced knowlege/experience with sharing an ACT! database across multiple computers on a LAN, please PM me. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I encourage all my customers to buy macs for their home machines. They run great with little fuss but I have yet to see an all mac network. You just gotta have a windows app at some point.
to be honest, as i deal with them everyday, they are largely the laziest ppl on earth. most in boston lack social skills like u wouldnt believe. some are good though, some take their work seriously, others just hide and pretend so they dont have to do anything. I have the worst of all worlds; sales TO IT ppl.
