My experiences with IT across multiple organizations is that they’re understaffed and not hiring particularly competent people.
The competent people they do have are generally egomaniacs because they’re the only person or persons in a department full of idiots, and they deal with idiots all day, so they assume everyone is an idiot.
Additionally, IT is SUPER territorial. Like, noticeably so. They have 1-2 people that know what they’re doing, but their whole staff acts like they’re as smart as their smartest person, which they are, unassailably, not. I give a lot of respect to the competent and knowledgeable ones, because I realize they’re also managing a bunch of idiots that don’t know they’re idiots.
Across three different organizations, I’ve watched five members of IT fired for their arrogance. If you’re interested in doing this, simply hire an attorney, bring the smart person into the room with the arrogant idiot, and make it clear that someone in that room is not going to work for the organization in two weeks, and then explain the situation.
If you feel attacked by this, you’re one of the idiot IT staff. I’m good friends with our current CIO and security lead. I hate to break it to you, but they don’t like you either. You are described as “cannon fodder for grandpa.”
Easy to fire, easy to hire. This cartoon adequately captures the level of questions that incompetent people working in IT can feel superior about. But they’re not serious IT issues within a large organization.
That’s why you hire kids that graduated with “computer degrees.” So they can make cartoons and catch all the bullshit, while the real professionals do the real work.
Yeah a place I worked for had managers that thought that way. Then something broke and since the guy who knew how to fix it was fired a long time ago… well… I was already long gone by then. But their system was down for nearly a week.
Now if the managers established any kind of process then personality conflicts wouldn’t be an issue, everything would be documented in advance (ie. planning) and the IT would just be following an agreed upon plan. Both management and the staff know everything that’s happening and why it’s happening. And if there’s staff turnover it’s no biggie because everything is documented and the management knows where the documentation is.
But that requires work… by management. So in many places it doesn’t happen.
The reason why you have arrogant IT staff is only because they know that you don’t know how anything works and they do. They know that if you fire them you’ll be fucking over yourself because if something breaks there’s a good chance you won’t know how to fix it and it may take their replacement a long time to figure it out because you never gave the IT staff an adequate amount of time to document anything.
Sure when you fire these guys things won’t break immediately. It might be a year, even several years before that critical thing (that you never required to be documented, no time for that) breaks and the system is down for an extended period of time.
The IT guys are arrogant because their boss is too stupid to know how to manage things properly to know how things are set up. Some managers are too stupid to even know why their IT guys are arrogant. They’re arrogant because they know that by firing them, the manager is fucking himself over. They’re just underestimating how stupid their manager is.
If you feel attacked by this, you’re one of the idiot IT managers.
Agreed. I recognize it is the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and The Woz generation. But the technology is so far beyond what they created, even though we use what the Boomer generation created every day, and I get that.
It’s the Jobs, Gates, and Woz generation, but until they step out of the way we won’t get a new generation of pioneers in technology. It used to be the dream was to create the next big thing, now the dream is to make something that gets you bought up by Google, Apple, or Microsoft.
Never ask them if it's plugged in. Ask them to unplug it and plug it back in. Make something up about contact patches on the cables getting corrosion. That way they can see that it's not plugged in without feeling ashamed for not checking it.
I’m not IT, just a college instructor, but you’d be amazed at how many Gen Z students have told me that they can’t log into their email because they don’t know their own password. Not even forgot; they don’t even know it in the first place because every device remembers everything for them.
To be fair that is basically what we are trying to get people to do though. Use a good password vault with a single strong password and two factor authentication. All other passwords should be a uniquely generated password for that application.
Like others have said they’re probably using Google as a password manager. When you’re making an account for anything while in the Chrome browser it recommends strong passwords for you such as UjafUif&i$ureT6hj9gzq5hvc$tcgo0be3. Would you memorize it?
I get it, but I also don’t understand the idea of letting Google suggest a random secure password for me. Probably just the Genx/Millenial in me, but I subscribe to the xkcd school of random password generation (password generator), which makes it really easy to have secure passwords that meet complexity requirements and are also easy to memorize.
Definitely. I don’t really do anything that is particularly sensitive, so I only have 3-4 standard passwords (that meet the most common complexity criteria) that I separate by how sensitive the information/service is, but if I truly needed more, I would absolutely be using a 3rd party password vault. I just don’t have the need right now, so I haven’t bothered.
What gets me is the people that don’t know their own passwords, don’t know how/where to look them up, and don’t even understand how to reset their passwords (because they can’t log into their own email). I don’t even know how they function in modern society.
What gets me is the people that don’t know their own passwords, don’t know how/where to look them up, and don’t even understand how to reset their passwords
I worked support for a phone manufacturer for a while and helped a lot of poor lost souls struggle to get back into their Google accounts on their new and replacement devices. I got a lot of them in, but some may have never gotten out of authentication hell
ironically I think tech literacy is going down with future gens thanks to so many functions getting automated. Kids aren’t learning how their computers work because it does all of work for them
I hate to be a “kids these days” person, but you’re absolutely right. My Gen Z students don’t even understand how folder/file structure works; they just download everything onto their desktop and use the search function to find what they need later. If they can’t remember what something was called, they’re SOL.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of faith in Gen Z and Alpha, but their strengths are definitely not the strengths of Millenials or Gen X.
My girlfriend (millenial) is like that as well and it is infuriating. I tell her time and time again, just use a password manager that isn’t the browser’s password manager and you are golden. You just need to remember one “complicated” password, i.e. something with more than 8 characters and that’s it.
The many times she doesn’t know her password to important account is mind boggling.
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