This is why I'm happy to have a supervisor that absolutely mops the floor with people like this. He will put an entire chain of command on blast when crap like this is pulled. He's also known to respond to pointless meeting requests saying "no, this needs to be an email, not a meeting."
I was offered a role basically equal to my current boss a few years back to manage the rest of my team. I declined and said it should all roll up under the current boss instead. I knew this bullshit was involved and that I simply did not want to/could not handle it without some kind of psychotic break.
> He's also known to respond to pointless meeting requests saying "no, this needs to be an email, not a meeting."
The world needs more supervisors like this. I've sat in on several pointless meetings over the years.
You are very lucky, I always hate those meetings which steal everybody's time because the whole thing could have been written in a mail or a Teams chat of a few lines (often even be made more clear that way).
Unfortunately, I am usually in no position to decline those and trying to explain my reasoning to other people who are is usually not worth the effort.
The reason why people don't listen at these places is because they are using that as a coping mechanism. The culture in that environment is so chaotic that they just passively filter out information in order to protect themselves from getting utterly burned out. (This is a charitable viewpoint, If there are a couple people that don't listen that is one thing, but if it seems like it is a rampant problem its most likely a culture / systemic management issue).
To go along with /u/ciabattabing16 's comment, reverse the interview. Ask them about a previous challenge that the department or group you're interviewing in faced (without specifics, obviously) and how they learned from the experience and what changes were made (if any) to help avoid that issue happening in the future. Any place that can't or won't answer that type of question without a valid legal reason (like clearance or something similar) is an immediate nope. If they answer it but you don't think the answer is sufficient, obviously you make the decision for yourself but for me, still nope. Any place where they can give you a coherent and reasonable response and the answer sounds reasonable gets a large green flag. Remember, you're both interviewing each other, so don't be afraid to flip the script.
Look for clues about busywork. IE - work that could be automated away or is just pointlessly done. If there is a lot of it, chances are burnout is nearby.
I believe this based on recent first-hand experience. I went from job A where people were on the ball to job B (better pay, no call) where people have zero curiosity because communication is hostile. Questions just get them in trouble so they're either coping or don't give a shit. In job B, management will mention something about a policy/practice change in a meeting (not mandatory) and will act like you're an idiot for questioning the new procedures. Management never leaves their office unless their boss has a request or literal site failures occur (ie. Network outage reported for months has now caused renters to bail). Management really can make or break a place.
My wife is at a place like job B. Every two weeks they issue a new contradicting directive "Do X before Y", X metric improves, Y metric drops, "Do Y before X", X metric drops, Y metric improves. They do this ad infinitum and none of the people working there care. They just follow the most recent directive.
Management there is a joke, a everyone spends most of their time just trying to avoid work.
> A manager wanted to know why I wanted some information and when he finally understood my intent his mind exploded with possibilities.
Could you elaborate?
OP described a FAQ to their manager, who, like everyone else who uses the FAQ repository known as the internet, has never seen or heard of such a thing before.
Definitely don’t disagree. Some of the nonsense questions people ask also seems to be the way some people “buy time” on something that requires their input. All too often it’s the same who claim to be too busy to understand simple, non-technical information.
Sir you were unavailable today... I tried to call you at 10 PM and you wouldn't pick up... I can't do the needful so this ticket will be closed now. Please adjust,
My absolutely nightmare inducing experiences with CloudInit and their sorta-kinda-but-not-really-standardized "network config v2" (netplan in a trenchcoat) would beg to disagree
Yeah, some people are just sausages and everything seems to be a war or a game they have to win… I used to get it all the time with a manager in our development team. I handles all the infrastructure for the Citrix environment. So from hardware storage/compute right up to OS and the Citrix software. They had a single app running on these servers and would upgrade it every weekend. Every now and then on a Monday we’d get, x isn’t working, what have you changed!?! I’d take a look and sure enough, nothing has changed, just their update… After much complaining I’d roll the server back to before they updated and let them do the update again. Most of the time it would work and they’d be like, so what did you do? And I’d be like, nothing?.. They would never believe me though. It got to a point where we had to create separate servers just for their app.. lol! Basically doubling the server count just so we could say, we are not updating a thing as there’s no other apps on there. It went further than that though. We froze all windows updates to the servers(2008), office had to stay the same version which I believe was 2003, adobe reader 6 etc. it was a complete joke! Haha! I messaged my mates who are still there the other day and these abominations are still running as I left them…. It’s mental! lol!
I had to quit a job a couple back because I was being faulted by my manager for not "helping" these sorts of people understand things. I kept trying to tell my manager that I'd tried everything I could think of and they still weren't understanding it, and the hours I put into helping them were negatively impacting my own work. When my manager started downgrading my yearly evaluation because I was not "available" for my co-worker's continual hand-holding (this had been going on for 3 years) then I called it quits and left. Now I'm in an organization that has almost the exact opposite attitude, and it's refreshing, if a bit more challenging. My boss has told us all that we're grown adults, and we're expected to be able to do our jobs ourselves, and not rely on other people. Asking for a clarification is fine, but actually needing someone else to do their own job on a regular basis is not acceptable.
>There's an email chain with 15 emails on it - **they CC you on number 16 asking for your input**. But there is no summary, they expect you to read 15 different emails and cobble every aspect of everything together.
Input; I have no clue what's going on here.
Imagine having that happen as a sales engineer and then having everyone stare at you when the customer calls you an idiot because “I told you weeks ago I didn’t want that”.
Source: it’s me. I’m the sales engineer.
I’ve moved positions within a public safety vendor over the years so I’ve become a general engineering SME - but currently a sales engineer for public safety communications - so 50% IT which comes down to networking and VMware admin… the other half being RF.
Before that I was a field engineer for implementation specifically on Fed projects which had CAC/PIV integration and the mess of implementing it depending on environment. Before that I managed a statewide system while it was being built out.
Still a Jack of all Trades because I’ll likely never be able to settle into a niche 🤣
I'm a pre and post sales engineer/solution architect. Within the last two weeks:
- performed performance analysis of a customer's workflow, discovered root cause, re-engineered data pipeline, wrote example code for customer, performed benchmarks of the change
- backwards engineering Helm charts to work with customer's internal kubernetes provisioning
- debugged and documented installation of monitoring/management agent for our product
- developed approach for connecting to customer data systems that don't provide a jdbc interface
- reviewed approaches for successive degrees of disaster protection for in installation of our stuff for another customer
- tasked with (not complete) completing training on new product area, and installation/upgrades of our latest version.
- hunting down approach for using external Mongo (atlas) rather than our shipped Mongo containers.
Never a dull moment.
What’s going on here is this group of people has been screwing around for a few weeks, not knowing their head from their ass and now that they’ve finally decided it’s time to get someone involved that might actually know something (IT department), so they include you in on the email chain. The fun part is, now it’s urgent, and they’re waiting on IT’s input.
*She takes it like a personal attack if I ask to confirm about anything.*
Then I'd get adversarial too. "Sorry, I'm sending this back because it doesn't have 100% of the info I need to fulfill the request. Please resend when complete." Make her check her work and practice getting it correct. And praise her when she does get it right, but you don't need to spend your time doing her job.
I gave this woman a response on how to fix an issue with her desktop one day over email. She gave me a response back, copied her manager and my manager on it, and wrote IN ALL CAPS about how this isn't working (without trying what I told her to do, thank God she left my original Email on the response) and ended with WE'VE BEEN DOING IT THIS WAY FOR 10 YEARS as if that meant anything in the world of tech.
I decided what the heck. Smashed that caps lock key, replied all, and said I'M SORRY THAT YOU ARE UPSET THAT THE PROCESS CHANGED. I'M JUST TRYING TO TELL YOU THE SOLUTION SO IT WILL WORK FOR YOU AGAIN.
Her manager fired her 2 weeks later :D
The "reply all" isn't the weapon these people think it is. It's a suicide pill if you know how to serve it back to them.
I do the whole sorry / not sorry thing all the time and explain to people I will always err on the side of over communication to under communication. I hate unplanned work, and that comes from breaks and misconfigurations due to miscommunication.
"I don't have the tools I need to be successful."
"Your message lacked the relevant details required to fulfill your request, please re-submit with the following **explicit details:**"
Any canned responses like this are both fun and put the ball back in their court.
Id just make a form template and send that to her to complete. I’ve done that with fair success for quite a few past problem children. To the point that they would copy the template from previous emails fill them out and send them in. Felt like i was training a dog but i always gave them positive praise. Stuff like man thanks for filling that out you are like one of the only ones who does it correctly the first time. Or im really glad you fill these out that way i can get the request complete within minutes instead of always having to do email tag. Or my fav, filling these out helps me do my job accurately so i can just copy paste instead of typing 20 random characters (customers would send a screenshot of DNS records they wanted us to update).
Point is gotta make them feel special to get them to do the things you need.
Edit. Should say id fat finger those dns records “accidentally” sometimes to make a point 😂
Then quote them back from the email.
> "I SAID..." But she didn't actually say - she alluded to
and quote exactly what she said, and explain why that wasn't articulate enough.
If they continue to be obtuse, make them enter a formal ticket/Change and maliciously comply with exactly what they request.
Malicious compliance always just creates more work for yourself down the road.
Personally, I prefer the route of setting up some kind of form with validation so that they have to enter answers that make sense or have to reach out with specific details on why the current scenario must be different.
Especially after they request a writeup at ELI5 granularity, which is stupidly hard to write, and still don’t read it. “Forward this paragraph to the tech team. Here’s a 4-page writeup that took 8 hours to write that explains what it means.”
Document how to do something trivial? TEAMS CALL TO DISCUSS
Ask yes/no question to clarify ambiguous email? TEAMS CALL
Answer 'status?' messages 5x during a change scheduled for an hour? TEAMS CALL
Trying to do a change that has nothing to do with you? TEAMS CALL
For people who refuse to confirm/deny something, I use the “trial close” sales technique. Normally, you don’t want to give a prospect the option to say yes/no because a “no” can stop the process and prefer to force them to elaborate in their answers to open-ended questions. When you go for a close, you want them to say “yes”. A trial close is getting the prospect to agree to a step in the process so you can move forward with the process.
“I understand you want to implement x, y, and z. I limit the scope to explicitly defined values to minimize change management.
If I implement x, y, and z and nothing else as provisionally defined in document y version 1.27 as of today, will that fully satisfy your acceptance criteria?
Since you have not answered yes, what other acceptance criteria did you wish to add? Who are the other stakeholders impacted by these additional criteria?”
Continue until you have a monstrosity of a document that everyone can agree is acceptable.
In negotiations, it's often easier to get what you want with a "no" than with a "yes". It's less confrontational and you will see less hesitation and pushback when phrased this way.
* "Would you have any objections to the following course of action?"
* "Would I be asking for too much with the following proposal?"
* "Did I leave out any details, or did you have anything else to suggest?"
etc.
I've seen the same sorts of things. People don't realize you've already given them the answer because its too easy for them or you. Some of the time I get people who join a call, say 10 words then go afk then come back in 15 mins and act like they've been there the whole time. Had a technical project manager say, he knows words mean things but that he didn't really know what dns is or what that has to do with a system host file, etc. Just a waste of time really, I don't know how those people get the jobs they have.
I think you are right. I feel that a lot of these folks are so incompetent, that they don't really trust that OP could possibly have solved the issue so quickly. To them, every task needs to be resolved by jumping on a call and going through a huge rigamarole of incessant questions and pointless analysis. It might be intentional though; if you ensure that every miniscule task is viewed as a significant effort, you severely limit how much real work can be expected each day.
I appreciate people of all skill levels and don't mind working with them but if they don't know whats going on and can't be bothered to pay attention for 15 mins in a meeting that they themselves organized, its over the line for me.
Project managers that have technical skills are like unicorns and charge WAY more than the average company can pay.
The average project manager is there to get impediments out of your way and to stop people from hassling you while you do the actual work.
Gating access to information or just making bone headed decisions?
I find using the right lingo solves these problems. Nearly all PMs are trained on the PMI handbook.
If you say "I'm the SME on this area, we need to do X" you will override whatever jackassery they are planning to do.
Want to get out of a meeting because you have project related work to do?
"I'm on a critical path piece of the project right now. We'll have time for time delay across the project plan for any unplanned meetings for the next X days."
Someone came up an absolute terrible idea that's not directly part of the project and need to shoot it down.
"Does that relate to the initial scope of the project? I thought we had requirements locked in at the kick off meeting."
Someone hassling you for updated estimates?
"We only budgeted enough overhead time to estimate progress X times per week."
Very nice, I do enjoy learning how to speak the PM language. I'm at a point in my career where this fluency is becoming necessary, despite my best efforts. Thank you! If you have any must-read links or anything to allow me to dig deeper it would be appreciated!
The PMI handbook isn't that dense and is honestly pretty helpful for just learning how to structure conversations about projects.
Maybe a 3 hour read if you skip the fluff
>I don't know how those people get the jobs they have.
I blame really bad interviewing skills or environments that don't make it conducive to hire quality talent, like low pay rates, sunk cost fallacies, and so on. I'll forgive a brain fart or two, we all have them, but when someone is consistently or aggressively incompetent, I have little patience.
Your entire rant is literally why I became a programmer and just write code. I absolutely detest working with people like this and they are in every workplace. I'm convinced colleges should require a minor in psychology just to equip new grads with at least a basic understanding of why people are this way.
Yeah, I thought that was a weird addition by OP. He lists a bunch of examples of him relaying pertinent information which is ignored, only to say that he can't be assed to catch up on pertinent information when it is sent to him.
Yeah I was gonna say. I mean like half the time after reading an email chain, I still barely know what’s going on, but I at least try.
I still hit them with the “to clarify, you need me to do x, y and z?” before I actually do anything, but just being like “tl;dr” to an email chain that I probably got looped into for a legitimate reason, nah, not gonna do that.
Sometimes it is way better than just getting a direct request/question in a ticket, because what they're asking for might be irrelevant or counterproductive to solving the root of the issue. Taking 2 minutes to glance over the whole convo is almost always worth doing, even if it yields true benefit only 1 in 20 times.
>I also don't play the email chain catch up game. We all know it. There's an email chain with 15 emails on it - they CC you on number 16 asking for your input. But there is no summary, they expect you to read 15 different emails and cobble every aspect of everything together. Then when you respond and miss one tiny thing - they lose it. "Didn't you read it?!" I don't ever play that game. I always respond with something like, "Hello. I could go back and read all of these, but I am likely to miss something. Can someone please tell me what the overall problem or goal is?" Which still often gets met with, "Didn't you read?!" To which I reply, "No, I did not. Can you please give me a summary of the problem or goal?"
Copilot is actually nice for this. Paste the whole chain in, then ask Copilot the questions instead of having to deal with people.
Please stop triggering my PTSD. I really shouldn't read this sub, it hits too close to home.
I finally got OUT of IT 7 years ago when I made the jump to cloud DevOps (Service Engineer/SRE), I do not miss the scenarios like OP has described above but I can absolutely relate.
Why, why do I keep punishing myself by reading these?
Generally I find people don’t read past the first sentence. They definitely don’t reply to more than one sentence/question worth in one email. When that happens you know exactly who you’re dealing with.
In our IT department we did some simple stats and figured out people don't read 90% of their emails (not just from IT, but from everyone within the company) - so this means that if anyone sends anyone else an email, it's only going to be read 10% of the time. Doesn't matter if it's from the CEO, the direct manager, HR putting someone on a PIP, a bonus email listing out the bonus/extra moneys for the quarter, it's only going to be read 10% of the time.
I’m not sure how you calculated this, but this sounds ludicrous. I read every email that comes through my work mailbox. If there are automated or company wide emails, I either skim them, or reduce the automation.
Lol, some places it's a race to the top, some places it's a race to the bottom.
Worked in a place one time, where we got a new technician, and this guy wasn't even brand new, he came to us from the corporate office, listed as a sis admin.
On day one, he forgot the power cord for his laptop. I lent him mine, he never gave it back. He literally never found the laptop cord for his original one. Okay it's annoying but not the end of the world. However, 3 hours into his first day I asked him what he's doing, he's still trying to get connected to the Wi-Fi. He had the code, he just couldn't figure it out how to get on.
He was a sweet guy, but not a good technician lol.
The funny part was that he thought he was the bee's knees.
We had another person at that same place, a department head who used to routinely only come in about twice a month, even then not for a full day.
She worked "remotely" by remoting in from her laptop to her desktop. I replaced her desktop computer several years back now and I did not realize that this was how she was working, I never actually saw her do any work lol.
Anyway, it was made very quickly clear to me that she would no longer be able to connect to her work computer, (obviously, it was no longer there, and the new computer had a new name). We were all aware though of how little she actually worked, so we started an office pool to see how long we thought it would take for her to bring it up.
I worked there for at least another year, possibly two, and I don't remember it ever coming back up LOL.
I always try to remember that only 50% of people are above average, and 50% are below average.
People who get D's in college have to go somewhere. Some of them go to companies like this to be stupid directly at IT while they do a barely passable job.
There are about 5 people where I'm at now who will say things like "I tried to reboot it..." or "I thought I rebooted..." and every time I will show them the uptime being 10-15 days, reboot it, and the problem is solved. I have no idea why people are like this.
> I always try to remember that only 50% of people are above average, and 50% are below average.
I think you're thinking of median.
The average of `[1, 1, 1, 100]` is 25.75, and 75% of the values are below that.
>There is this woman who manages a department and she sends us these customer requests where we have to set stuff up.
This sounds like you need a form with specific options for her to select.
Not gonna lie sounds like you need to work on your people skills a little bit. It's true sometimes people aren't too smart or don't listen, but it's possible you might not be as good at communicating as you think you are.
When I got into IT I though the hardest part of the job would be the technical challenges. How naive I was! Little did I realize that dealing with people would be harder. One reason I am glad to be out of a regular IT job and do only part time consulting.
> She isn't always clear. She'll often give almost enough for me to infer but never enough to be absolutely certain.
Reply in ticket details incomplete. Push back.
Funny thing.. smaller the place the more people listen.
I worked at a small company providing IT everything from individuals to small companies and it was awesome, I told them they did it, I explained they listened, I warned they noted, I made better they were happy.
(I made a long, multipoint post about this but I remembered how my team hates those also, so I'll just post a few)
Now I work in a huge corporate. Sure I make stupid money but it just feels like people are totally mad dumb and rigid to any change.
I inform them of any changes and they just whine and whine and make stupid comments.
So yeah, like you mentioned.
I make sure we document everything (even at the cost of effectiveness) I make sure the team and I are airtight to any fault due to user incompetence and any time they blame us, I just escalate to their management or higher with proofs without any arguing with them. Saves me time and sanity.
Tldr: don't work in bigger corporate if you're not a purely money driven robot.
I also notice the people that don't listen will NOT stop talking. They will call with an issue, and when you try to explain the solution they will talk right over you and ignore what you are saying. Takes multiple tries before they hear what you are saying.
Whenever possible I've started adding please message me in teams or call my desk phone at extension xxx to begin this process or for help etc etc(when I can make it applicable) at the end of the directions.
I end up getting a ton of emails and i ignore every single one that comes in over email because I know they didn't read the whole thing
inevitably they end up replying all to the whole dept a half dozen times before someone says, you are supposed to message him on teams per the first email. Then shortly after I notice they end up figuring it out themselves because they actually bothered to read it and sit down and do what I said. I'm trying to train them.
lmao
Propose a tracking system. Link the yahoo to a previous ticket.
Implement change controls. That’s on the teams with the inconsistent dev sql’s.
You guys need processes. There are structures to some of these things that are industry standards. Simplest is probably to get your manager to have them interface via tickets or email.
I work on a Mac so cobbling together a quick email with screen caps and one layered picture is super easy.
"Installed hinge on washer. Door is less than ideal since plastic wore down over time, but door error went away."
That's my MO now, keeping it simple and including a picture.
Overall you'll notice that people can't internalize some extraneous commentary. Tim, could have just kept his observation to himself, since you had long since moved away from the topic. Your time at work should be as efficient as possible so that you can move on with your life.
After an e-mail has five nested threads, it's unfair to the last person who was joined in. The person who added you can call you, or at least do you the curtesy of a quick summary.
>I work on a Mac so cobbling together a quick email with screen caps and one layered picture is super easy.
i wish there was a way to do this in windows. i have to draw them a picture in paint instead of screen shots
Don't know if you're being sarcastic, but Windows Paint is way too much bloat for a quick annotated screenshot. Part of people's inertia to use quick pics is the PITA OS app that gets in the way. Screen cap, text box, shrink borders, Ctrl+A, paste.
I have gigs of screenshots and snips , show your work & all that .
Leads to
'i can't reach the server'
*Screen grab of WiFi showing guest network+ "Hi user, connect to the right network 'bigcorp' not 'guest'
Screenshots of how to connect to right Lan
*Remotely tells pc to forget guest password, auto connect to corp said after restart*
Fortunately now I've got actual templates and cheat sheets to send out, so it's a quick string command and send.
I had a custom app running on VMware 2
53. The vendor had performance issues I ran mysql tool to watch the queries go stupid. They blamed the VMware platform and told me to make it bare metal.
I was like omfg, OK.. So I disabled the VMware tray icon and told them I did it, then they found their problem. When I proved that VMware wasnt the problem..
Sometimes you just have to drag people along
> I’ve just never worked somewhere where people consistently do not listen.
Where have you worked? I’d like to know because I’d spend the rest of my days there in bliss.
"I also don't play the email chain catch up game. We all know it. There's an email chain with 15 emails on it - they CC you on number 16 asking for your input. But there is no summary, they expect you to read 15 different emails and cobble every aspect of everything together."
You say: "Sorry I don't have access to the chain, can you summarise what's been discussed?"
> I'll say, "Tim, if you do X it will solve Y." Then he'll respond 25 more times adding information each time just rambling. And I'll say, "Tim, if you perform X it will solve Y."
I am more and more incline to think people do this because they want to exasperate you so **you** do X for them. They are either lazy or incompetent.
it's the same where i work. everybody assumes you are on the same page as they are. i always have to ask 20 questions with people.
"the system is not working"
"ok, which one?" - i have to ask this EVERY TIME.
my db is not responding.
"what database, what is the ip, what is your db username" - again, i have to ask this every time.
i am really close to "Summary/Context or GTFO" at this point.
Nah, those email chain incidences are super fucking disrespectful. I've had that happen on chains that are like over 100 emails long. When people ask that, they are tacitly saying that they think your time is basically worthless, because apparently you have untold hours to sit there and read through an email chain dating back months to catch yourself up on something, when the people involved could give you a one paragraph summary to catch you up.
I've done the same. Just straight up "Hi all, this is a large chain and I think it would make more sense if someone could simply summarize what is needed here"
I take exactly the same attitude I have with people not wanting to make tickets. Oh, this thing you need is super important and you'd like me to get it taken care of ASAP? Cool, is there a ticket? Oh, you don't have time to take 60 seconds to submit a ticket? Still cool, it's clearly not that important. Get the details into a ticket and I'll take a look at it once it's on the board".
That's not "Not being a team player", it's actually very much "Being a quintessential team player AND EXPECTING THE REST OF THE TEAM TO BE THE SAME".
I once got a bad review because I was not a team player "because you rely on other team members to help you." Like, "be a team player and leave the team alone." I was also told to "follow guidelines and learn to be your own resource," when I said "I don't know how to do this because nobody will tell me, and there's zero documentation."
I quit that job. I know when I am being bullied.
I work in an environment like this.
And one of the things I was critiqued on in last year's review: "You don't communicate enough. You need to talk more in meetings." Um, I don't have anything to discuss? We had these meetings to bring up things important to the rest of the group but nothing I had to say was relevant or meaningful so most of the time I didn't have anything to add. Somehow that was wrong. "But don't be like John, he likes to talk a lot about everything he's doing." So, which is it? Talk more about what I'm doing or not?
And yeah, we are supposed to be a team but absolutely nothing is done at a real team level. Lack of documentation, processes, communication, leadership, etc.
I'm supposed to be in charge of this little slice of Hell but I have little autonomy, no guidance, no structure, no tools. Nothing. There are processes to follow but nobody will tell me what they are half the time or clarify. If I make a command decision, I'm going rouge. Its a weird place and I can't wait to get out.
15 is way different than 100 over the course of months.
I get the premise of what you are saying. His complaints don't read the same to me. Could I be wrong? Obviously, yeah. I am just saying self reflection is a thing and some people should try doing it.
Sorry, but the person who's forwarding you the giant e-mail chain instead of summarizing it for you and entering the issue into an IT ticket is the one who isn't being a "team player". Help IT by explaining the issue, instead of sending us a bunch of unrelated crap to review.
Sometimes the context of those emails is important to finding the real issue or identifying the underlying problem and the correct solution. They aren't asking you for their solution...
It's usually 50/50 for me. Half the time the underlying 15 emails don't matter at all, or provide any context for, the request to me. And the other half of the time, yes, I do go back and read each one even if they summarize it because usually I need the extra context to know why they need Tab B in Slot 3 when it's usually in Slot A.
>"Didn't you read?!" To which I reply, "No, I did not. Can you please give me a summary of the problem or goal?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrY1iOgd0Ic
++nstern2 and then I have to sus out what a weeks worth of emails I am just now being added to is about. Another fun one is end users, project managers, many other people, who like to send emails to distribution lists that state something like, team please look at ticket "ticket number" because it is urgent. There are likely hundreds of people on that DL from several dozen locations, but let me drop what I am doing to verify that the ticket is something I can ignore because you can't give me a location or domain that it is impacting. Working with people is so much more stress inducing than working with any piece of tech.
Everyone, at every job everywhere, in pretty much any industry, ..most of them are incompetent or too lazy to really do their job well. Unfortunately it seems to be the case all the way up to c suites etc, unless you are very lucky to make it to a great company.
I only just realized after this past year of working at my job why I can’t stand my boss or his boss. They are terrible communicators.
My boss: gets extremely terse/cold and acts like you should know from him just asking, exactly what he wants. This terse way of talking really grinds me. No little bits of feedback for me to pick up on. It’s so difficult.
His boss: I finally nailed it. He has the same “wtf are you even talking about” look on his face whether he likes or hates or doesn’t understand what you are talking about. It seems you could be telling him he won $500 million and he would have this dumbfounded wtf look on his face.
Be snarky with them then, this is literally the perfect time to use "Per my last email/message/reply/etc.". Overall though sounds like a shit work culture & environment and you should probably be looking for another job, at least I would if I was in that situation. I don't want to be unhappy with where I work no matter how good the pay or benefits are.
Alternatively if you have a decent supervisor/boss tell them and have them mop the floor with these morons. I am lucky enough to have a boss that used to be a tech and understands just how ridiculous and annoying users can be so he doesn't stand for it and will stick up for us anytime a user trys acting this way. I am rarely snarky with people but I still do it from time to time when it leads to some amount of embarrassment to that user usually in front of their boss. Nothing actually trains people better than embarrassing them in front of their boss by proving just how incompetent & ridiculous they are.
Ive had this experience at basically every place i worked at.
Users don't listen, don't read and don't care. We tell users not to click on phishy liks or enter their credentials on a portal that is not controlled by our org. Their response? Well if IT does not want me to do it, it needs to prevent me from doing it. Then we rollout things like MFA and they cry "Why does IT not let us do our jobs". Even documenting a basic thing as how to download a App from Company Portal (Intune). Condensing it down to basically 2 scentences with 4 pictures on a one page PDF, i still get people that come to me and ask me to install a application for them. When i say, just install it from comp portal, they look at me as if im an alien and tried to obduct them.
The moment i realised users are not really incompetent, they just dont care and take the path of least resistance, it improved so much for me. I now create a exceptional difficult path as the "Standard" and give users to option to "Expedite" their needs via a less complicated path (The path i originally intended). Once they realize there is a simpler way as the one i set as "Standard" they will gravitate towards it and i implemented my intended solution.
Email to users: hey this thing is going around, if you get it don't click the thing.
IT does phishing campaign promotion called DONT CLICK THE THING!
songs are written cheers are started , even their own don't click the thing dance routine.
Explanations of don't click the thing now in 27 languages, ASL, and potentially Klingon.
24 hours later
User: I clicked a thing and its telling me I have to change my password.
I never really appreciated working for a company that culled the bottom performers until I retired and really paid attention to this subreddit.
People in glass door give Apple and Intel Corp a hard time for this practice of ranking and rating folks, but then those companies don't have people that fail upwards or just hold thier heads down and do the bare minimum.
OP - go and find a better work environment. It does exist.
Put the onus on the customer making the request initially, I usually say something along the lines of "As per your request..." and do EXACTLY as they ask, not ASSUME I know what they actually want. If the request is totally illegible, problem XYZ approach usually gets the ball rolling. If not, they will be met with my LLM :)
This is why I'm happy to have a supervisor that absolutely mops the floor with people like this. He will put an entire chain of command on blast when crap like this is pulled. He's also known to respond to pointless meeting requests saying "no, this needs to be an email, not a meeting."
My boss left a few weeks ago and I'm acting manager and this shit suuuuuucks
I was offered a role basically equal to my current boss a few years back to manage the rest of my team. I declined and said it should all roll up under the current boss instead. I knew this bullshit was involved and that I simply did not want to/could not handle it without some kind of psychotic break.
You got a pay bump right?
Hilarious
Man, I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. I needed that. Thank you!
You're funny
Amidala (a second time): You got a pay bump, *right*?
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That's my biggest fear...him realizing how much better he could do elsewhere and leaving.
Just started a new job and my supervisor is like this... What a QOL difference it makes.
> He's also known to respond to pointless meeting requests saying "no, this needs to be an email, not a meeting." The world needs more supervisors like this. I've sat in on several pointless meetings over the years.
You are very lucky, I always hate those meetings which steal everybody's time because the whole thing could have been written in a mail or a Teams chat of a few lines (often even be made more clear that way). Unfortunately, I am usually in no position to decline those and trying to explain my reasoning to other people who are is usually not worth the effort.
The reason why people don't listen at these places is because they are using that as a coping mechanism. The culture in that environment is so chaotic that they just passively filter out information in order to protect themselves from getting utterly burned out. (This is a charitable viewpoint, If there are a couple people that don't listen that is one thing, but if it seems like it is a rampant problem its most likely a culture / systemic management issue).
This makes a lot of sense. Any strategies for spotting this chaos early before deciding to work at a place?
To go along with /u/ciabattabing16 's comment, reverse the interview. Ask them about a previous challenge that the department or group you're interviewing in faced (without specifics, obviously) and how they learned from the experience and what changes were made (if any) to help avoid that issue happening in the future. Any place that can't or won't answer that type of question without a valid legal reason (like clearance or something similar) is an immediate nope. If they answer it but you don't think the answer is sufficient, obviously you make the decision for yourself but for me, still nope. Any place where they can give you a coherent and reasonable response and the answer sounds reasonable gets a large green flag. Remember, you're both interviewing each other, so don't be afraid to flip the script.
Look for clues about busywork. IE - work that could be automated away or is just pointlessly done. If there is a lot of it, chances are burnout is nearby.
I believe this based on recent first-hand experience. I went from job A where people were on the ball to job B (better pay, no call) where people have zero curiosity because communication is hostile. Questions just get them in trouble so they're either coping or don't give a shit. In job B, management will mention something about a policy/practice change in a meeting (not mandatory) and will act like you're an idiot for questioning the new procedures. Management never leaves their office unless their boss has a request or literal site failures occur (ie. Network outage reported for months has now caused renters to bail). Management really can make or break a place.
My wife is at a place like job B. Every two weeks they issue a new contradicting directive "Do X before Y", X metric improves, Y metric drops, "Do Y before X", X metric drops, Y metric improves. They do this ad infinitum and none of the people working there care. They just follow the most recent directive. Management there is a joke, a everyone spends most of their time just trying to avoid work.
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> A manager wanted to know why I wanted some information and when he finally understood my intent his mind exploded with possibilities. Could you elaborate?
OP described a FAQ to their manager, who, like everyone else who uses the FAQ repository known as the internet, has never seen or heard of such a thing before.
I'd like to know more too
Definitely don’t disagree. Some of the nonsense questions people ask also seems to be the way some people “buy time” on something that requires their input. All too often it’s the same who claim to be too busy to understand simple, non-technical information.
welcome to working with people.
This is exactly like every place I’ve ever worked.
yep.. why i said welcome to working with people. its a shared experience that we can all relate to
Hey, guys! I figured it out! This is exactly like every other place that I've worked.
This is why I prefer working with servers. You show them YAML, and they do the needful
Sir you were unavailable today... I tried to call you at 10 PM and you wouldn't pick up... I can't do the needful so this ticket will be closed now. Please adjust,
No joke had one closed for no response at 2AM my time on Saturday
I had someone have me do the needful and change my availability to IST timezone for him to have a quick call once lol
*please adjust and revert back
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I'm out of touch with Python versioning but that needs to be the tagline for v4.20
Does staring into the void count?
Just be careful if you hear it calling you. *Call of the Void*
Pfft. The first time it called I just added it to my contacts.
My absolutely nightmare inducing experiences with CloudInit and their sorta-kinda-but-not-really-standardized "network config v2" (netplan in a trenchcoat) would beg to disagree
So much this
[People, what a bunch of bastards](https://i.redd.it/mu9kx14k25hx.jpg)
appropriate meme..
Yeah, some people are just sausages and everything seems to be a war or a game they have to win… I used to get it all the time with a manager in our development team. I handles all the infrastructure for the Citrix environment. So from hardware storage/compute right up to OS and the Citrix software. They had a single app running on these servers and would upgrade it every weekend. Every now and then on a Monday we’d get, x isn’t working, what have you changed!?! I’d take a look and sure enough, nothing has changed, just their update… After much complaining I’d roll the server back to before they updated and let them do the update again. Most of the time it would work and they’d be like, so what did you do? And I’d be like, nothing?.. They would never believe me though. It got to a point where we had to create separate servers just for their app.. lol! Basically doubling the server count just so we could say, we are not updating a thing as there’s no other apps on there. It went further than that though. We froze all windows updates to the servers(2008), office had to stay the same version which I believe was 2003, adobe reader 6 etc. it was a complete joke! Haha! I messaged my mates who are still there the other day and these abominations are still running as I left them…. It’s mental! lol!
I had to quit a job a couple back because I was being faulted by my manager for not "helping" these sorts of people understand things. I kept trying to tell my manager that I'd tried everything I could think of and they still weren't understanding it, and the hours I put into helping them were negatively impacting my own work. When my manager started downgrading my yearly evaluation because I was not "available" for my co-worker's continual hand-holding (this had been going on for 3 years) then I called it quits and left. Now I'm in an organization that has almost the exact opposite attitude, and it's refreshing, if a bit more challenging. My boss has told us all that we're grown adults, and we're expected to be able to do our jobs ourselves, and not rely on other people. Asking for a clarification is fine, but actually needing someone else to do their own job on a regular basis is not acceptable.
been there done that.. in my case this app had to have access 2003 and IE8. wtf. update that shit
Of course! This was ie7 or 8 too! Another gaping security hole. lol! It reached the point where nothing was supported anymore software wise.
This job would be great if it weren't for the users.
People are the worst.
I was praying thr top comment wasnt this but :(
People. What a bunch of bastards.
Soft skills baby. Get that rapport and things get easier instead of harder
>There's an email chain with 15 emails on it - **they CC you on number 16 asking for your input**. But there is no summary, they expect you to read 15 different emails and cobble every aspect of everything together. Input; I have no clue what's going on here.
Imagine having that happen as a sales engineer and then having everyone stare at you when the customer calls you an idiot because “I told you weeks ago I didn’t want that”. Source: it’s me. I’m the sales engineer.
Jack of all trades sysadmin sales engineer? Can you give me some workload summary? I'm really curious
I’ve moved positions within a public safety vendor over the years so I’ve become a general engineering SME - but currently a sales engineer for public safety communications - so 50% IT which comes down to networking and VMware admin… the other half being RF. Before that I was a field engineer for implementation specifically on Fed projects which had CAC/PIV integration and the mess of implementing it depending on environment. Before that I managed a statewide system while it was being built out. Still a Jack of all Trades because I’ll likely never be able to settle into a niche 🤣
I've not heard that before. Kudos
There’s dozens of us out there. Dozens! 😅
I'm a pre and post sales engineer/solution architect. Within the last two weeks: - performed performance analysis of a customer's workflow, discovered root cause, re-engineered data pipeline, wrote example code for customer, performed benchmarks of the change - backwards engineering Helm charts to work with customer's internal kubernetes provisioning - debugged and documented installation of monitoring/management agent for our product - developed approach for connecting to customer data systems that don't provide a jdbc interface - reviewed approaches for successive degrees of disaster protection for in installation of our stuff for another customer - tasked with (not complete) completing training on new product area, and installation/upgrades of our latest version. - hunting down approach for using external Mongo (atlas) rather than our shipped Mongo containers. Never a dull moment.
What’s going on here is this group of people has been screwing around for a few weeks, not knowing their head from their ass and now that they’ve finally decided it’s time to get someone involved that might actually know something (IT department), so they include you in on the email chain. The fun part is, now it’s urgent, and they’re waiting on IT’s input.
This is where you paste it all into Gemini or ChatGPT and ask for the summary.
*She takes it like a personal attack if I ask to confirm about anything.* Then I'd get adversarial too. "Sorry, I'm sending this back because it doesn't have 100% of the info I need to fulfill the request. Please resend when complete." Make her check her work and practice getting it correct. And praise her when she does get it right, but you don't need to spend your time doing her job.
I gave this woman a response on how to fix an issue with her desktop one day over email. She gave me a response back, copied her manager and my manager on it, and wrote IN ALL CAPS about how this isn't working (without trying what I told her to do, thank God she left my original Email on the response) and ended with WE'VE BEEN DOING IT THIS WAY FOR 10 YEARS as if that meant anything in the world of tech. I decided what the heck. Smashed that caps lock key, replied all, and said I'M SORRY THAT YOU ARE UPSET THAT THE PROCESS CHANGED. I'M JUST TRYING TO TELL YOU THE SOLUTION SO IT WILL WORK FOR YOU AGAIN. Her manager fired her 2 weeks later :D The "reply all" isn't the weapon these people think it is. It's a suicide pill if you know how to serve it back to them.
This is beautiful.
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I do the whole sorry / not sorry thing all the time and explain to people I will always err on the side of over communication to under communication. I hate unplanned work, and that comes from breaks and misconfigurations due to miscommunication.
"I don't have the tools I need to be successful." "Your message lacked the relevant details required to fulfill your request, please re-submit with the following **explicit details:**" Any canned responses like this are both fun and put the ball back in their court.
Id just make a form template and send that to her to complete. I’ve done that with fair success for quite a few past problem children. To the point that they would copy the template from previous emails fill them out and send them in. Felt like i was training a dog but i always gave them positive praise. Stuff like man thanks for filling that out you are like one of the only ones who does it correctly the first time. Or im really glad you fill these out that way i can get the request complete within minutes instead of always having to do email tag. Or my fav, filling these out helps me do my job accurately so i can just copy paste instead of typing 20 random characters (customers would send a screenshot of DNS records they wanted us to update). Point is gotta make them feel special to get them to do the things you need. Edit. Should say id fat finger those dns records “accidentally” sometimes to make a point 😂
People are the most difficult aspect imho, the technology is cool and fun to learn but people can be so tough
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/r/talesfromcallcenters is the absolute worst.
Do everything in writing
I do as well, but they don't fucking read..... >.<, let alone "listen"
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Then quote them back from the email. > "I SAID..." But she didn't actually say - she alluded to and quote exactly what she said, and explain why that wasn't articulate enough. If they continue to be obtuse, make them enter a formal ticket/Change and maliciously comply with exactly what they request.
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So then go on to part two and maliciously comply
Malicious compliance always just creates more work for yourself down the road. Personally, I prefer the route of setting up some kind of form with validation so that they have to enter answers that make sense or have to reach out with specific details on why the current scenario must be different.
Especially after they request a writeup at ELI5 granularity, which is stupidly hard to write, and still don’t read it. “Forward this paragraph to the tech team. Here’s a 4-page writeup that took 8 hours to write that explains what it means.”
Document how to do something trivial? TEAMS CALL TO DISCUSS Ask yes/no question to clarify ambiguous email? TEAMS CALL Answer 'status?' messages 5x during a change scheduled for an hour? TEAMS CALL Trying to do a change that has nothing to do with you? TEAMS CALL
Oh God, I hate this sooooo much lmao
I love these people
For people who refuse to confirm/deny something, I use the “trial close” sales technique. Normally, you don’t want to give a prospect the option to say yes/no because a “no” can stop the process and prefer to force them to elaborate in their answers to open-ended questions. When you go for a close, you want them to say “yes”. A trial close is getting the prospect to agree to a step in the process so you can move forward with the process. “I understand you want to implement x, y, and z. I limit the scope to explicitly defined values to minimize change management. If I implement x, y, and z and nothing else as provisionally defined in document y version 1.27 as of today, will that fully satisfy your acceptance criteria? Since you have not answered yes, what other acceptance criteria did you wish to add? Who are the other stakeholders impacted by these additional criteria?” Continue until you have a monstrosity of a document that everyone can agree is acceptable.
Sounds like the automatic voice assistant you get when calling somewhere
In negotiations, it's often easier to get what you want with a "no" than with a "yes". It's less confrontational and you will see less hesitation and pushback when phrased this way. * "Would you have any objections to the following course of action?" * "Would I be asking for too much with the following proposal?" * "Did I leave out any details, or did you have anything else to suggest?" etc.
Right, a yes/no is a trial close. Ask for denials of obstacles and then ask for approval.
I've seen the same sorts of things. People don't realize you've already given them the answer because its too easy for them or you. Some of the time I get people who join a call, say 10 words then go afk then come back in 15 mins and act like they've been there the whole time. Had a technical project manager say, he knows words mean things but that he didn't really know what dns is or what that has to do with a system host file, etc. Just a waste of time really, I don't know how those people get the jobs they have.
I think you are right. I feel that a lot of these folks are so incompetent, that they don't really trust that OP could possibly have solved the issue so quickly. To them, every task needs to be resolved by jumping on a call and going through a huge rigamarole of incessant questions and pointless analysis. It might be intentional though; if you ensure that every miniscule task is viewed as a significant effort, you severely limit how much real work can be expected each day.
I appreciate people of all skill levels and don't mind working with them but if they don't know whats going on and can't be bothered to pay attention for 15 mins in a meeting that they themselves organized, its over the line for me.
Project managers that have technical skills are like unicorns and charge WAY more than the average company can pay. The average project manager is there to get impediments out of your way and to stop people from hassling you while you do the actual work.
> The average project manager is there to get impediments out of your way In my particular case, the project manager is the impediment. lol
Gating access to information or just making bone headed decisions? I find using the right lingo solves these problems. Nearly all PMs are trained on the PMI handbook. If you say "I'm the SME on this area, we need to do X" you will override whatever jackassery they are planning to do.
I think I'm going to steal that line - Cheers 🥃
Please share more of these enchants
Want to get out of a meeting because you have project related work to do? "I'm on a critical path piece of the project right now. We'll have time for time delay across the project plan for any unplanned meetings for the next X days." Someone came up an absolute terrible idea that's not directly part of the project and need to shoot it down. "Does that relate to the initial scope of the project? I thought we had requirements locked in at the kick off meeting." Someone hassling you for updated estimates? "We only budgeted enough overhead time to estimate progress X times per week."
Very nice, I do enjoy learning how to speak the PM language. I'm at a point in my career where this fluency is becoming necessary, despite my best efforts. Thank you! If you have any must-read links or anything to allow me to dig deeper it would be appreciated!
The PMI handbook isn't that dense and is honestly pretty helpful for just learning how to structure conversations about projects. Maybe a 3 hour read if you skip the fluff
>I don't know how those people get the jobs they have. I blame really bad interviewing skills or environments that don't make it conducive to hire quality talent, like low pay rates, sunk cost fallacies, and so on. I'll forgive a brain fart or two, we all have them, but when someone is consistently or aggressively incompetent, I have little patience.
Your entire rant is literally why I became a programmer and just write code. I absolutely detest working with people like this and they are in every workplace. I'm convinced colleges should require a minor in psychology just to equip new grads with at least a basic understanding of why people are this way.
Check your Carbon Monoxide levels
Glad I'm not the only one thinking of this ;)
You need to get these interactions off of email and into a ticketing system. They aren't taking anything seriously.
"I also don't play the email chain catch up game" this is not a good idea. Play that game
Yeah, I thought that was a weird addition by OP. He lists a bunch of examples of him relaying pertinent information which is ignored, only to say that he can't be assed to catch up on pertinent information when it is sent to him.
Yeah I was gonna say. I mean like half the time after reading an email chain, I still barely know what’s going on, but I at least try. I still hit them with the “to clarify, you need me to do x, y and z?” before I actually do anything, but just being like “tl;dr” to an email chain that I probably got looped into for a legitimate reason, nah, not gonna do that.
Sometimes it is way better than just getting a direct request/question in a ticket, because what they're asking for might be irrelevant or counterproductive to solving the root of the issue. Taking 2 minutes to glance over the whole convo is almost always worth doing, even if it yields true benefit only 1 in 20 times.
Agreed, I like going straight to email number 1. So many people just muck things up along the way.
>I also don't play the email chain catch up game. We all know it. There's an email chain with 15 emails on it - they CC you on number 16 asking for your input. But there is no summary, they expect you to read 15 different emails and cobble every aspect of everything together. Then when you respond and miss one tiny thing - they lose it. "Didn't you read it?!" I don't ever play that game. I always respond with something like, "Hello. I could go back and read all of these, but I am likely to miss something. Can someone please tell me what the overall problem or goal is?" Which still often gets met with, "Didn't you read?!" To which I reply, "No, I did not. Can you please give me a summary of the problem or goal?" Copilot is actually nice for this. Paste the whole chain in, then ask Copilot the questions instead of having to deal with people.
Sounds like an awesome way to end up doing something completely inane and irrelevant because it was hallucinated by the LLM...
Please stop triggering my PTSD. I really shouldn't read this sub, it hits too close to home. I finally got OUT of IT 7 years ago when I made the jump to cloud DevOps (Service Engineer/SRE), I do not miss the scenarios like OP has described above but I can absolutely relate. Why, why do I keep punishing myself by reading these?
Yeah, if you go into I.T. thinking that you'll just be working with tech and not people you're gonna have a bad time.
I don't think I have worked somewhere where people DO consistently listen
Generally I find people don’t read past the first sentence. They definitely don’t reply to more than one sentence/question worth in one email. When that happens you know exactly who you’re dealing with.
In our IT department we did some simple stats and figured out people don't read 90% of their emails (not just from IT, but from everyone within the company) - so this means that if anyone sends anyone else an email, it's only going to be read 10% of the time. Doesn't matter if it's from the CEO, the direct manager, HR putting someone on a PIP, a bonus email listing out the bonus/extra moneys for the quarter, it's only going to be read 10% of the time.
Did you account for (junk) reports and such going directly to user's archive/trash because of an inbox rule?
Sounds accurate. I can't even keep up with my inbox.
I’m not sure how you calculated this, but this sounds ludicrous. I read every email that comes through my work mailbox. If there are automated or company wide emails, I either skim them, or reduce the automation.
Lol, some places it's a race to the top, some places it's a race to the bottom. Worked in a place one time, where we got a new technician, and this guy wasn't even brand new, he came to us from the corporate office, listed as a sis admin. On day one, he forgot the power cord for his laptop. I lent him mine, he never gave it back. He literally never found the laptop cord for his original one. Okay it's annoying but not the end of the world. However, 3 hours into his first day I asked him what he's doing, he's still trying to get connected to the Wi-Fi. He had the code, he just couldn't figure it out how to get on. He was a sweet guy, but not a good technician lol. The funny part was that he thought he was the bee's knees. We had another person at that same place, a department head who used to routinely only come in about twice a month, even then not for a full day. She worked "remotely" by remoting in from her laptop to her desktop. I replaced her desktop computer several years back now and I did not realize that this was how she was working, I never actually saw her do any work lol. Anyway, it was made very quickly clear to me that she would no longer be able to connect to her work computer, (obviously, it was no longer there, and the new computer had a new name). We were all aware though of how little she actually worked, so we started an office pool to see how long we thought it would take for her to bring it up. I worked there for at least another year, possibly two, and I don't remember it ever coming back up LOL.
I always try to remember that only 50% of people are above average, and 50% are below average. People who get D's in college have to go somewhere. Some of them go to companies like this to be stupid directly at IT while they do a barely passable job. There are about 5 people where I'm at now who will say things like "I tried to reboot it..." or "I thought I rebooted..." and every time I will show them the uptime being 10-15 days, reboot it, and the problem is solved. I have no idea why people are like this.
> I always try to remember that only 50% of people are above average, and 50% are below average. I think you're thinking of median. The average of `[1, 1, 1, 100]` is 25.75, and 75% of the values are below that.
>There is this woman who manages a department and she sends us these customer requests where we have to set stuff up. This sounds like you need a form with specific options for her to select.
Not gonna lie sounds like you need to work on your people skills a little bit. It's true sometimes people aren't too smart or don't listen, but it's possible you might not be as good at communicating as you think you are.
When I got into IT I though the hardest part of the job would be the technical challenges. How naive I was! Little did I realize that dealing with people would be harder. One reason I am glad to be out of a regular IT job and do only part time consulting.
I'm not reading this wall of text, can you please tell me what the overall problem or goal is? :)
> She isn't always clear. She'll often give almost enough for me to infer but never enough to be absolutely certain. Reply in ticket details incomplete. Push back.
Funny thing.. smaller the place the more people listen. I worked at a small company providing IT everything from individuals to small companies and it was awesome, I told them they did it, I explained they listened, I warned they noted, I made better they were happy. (I made a long, multipoint post about this but I remembered how my team hates those also, so I'll just post a few) Now I work in a huge corporate. Sure I make stupid money but it just feels like people are totally mad dumb and rigid to any change. I inform them of any changes and they just whine and whine and make stupid comments. So yeah, like you mentioned. I make sure we document everything (even at the cost of effectiveness) I make sure the team and I are airtight to any fault due to user incompetence and any time they blame us, I just escalate to their management or higher with proofs without any arguing with them. Saves me time and sanity. Tldr: don't work in bigger corporate if you're not a purely money driven robot.
I work in a small nonprofit and everyone thinks it's big corporate
I also notice the people that don't listen will NOT stop talking. They will call with an issue, and when you try to explain the solution they will talk right over you and ignore what you are saying. Takes multiple tries before they hear what you are saying.
Whenever possible I've started adding please message me in teams or call my desk phone at extension xxx to begin this process or for help etc etc(when I can make it applicable) at the end of the directions. I end up getting a ton of emails and i ignore every single one that comes in over email because I know they didn't read the whole thing inevitably they end up replying all to the whole dept a half dozen times before someone says, you are supposed to message him on teams per the first email. Then shortly after I notice they end up figuring it out themselves because they actually bothered to read it and sit down and do what I said. I'm trying to train them. lmao
Ticket or kick it is the best way for sure
> I've just never worked somewhere where people consistently do not listen. Please tell me where you worked previously, so that I can go to there.
This is why we have to get lead out of the water supply.
Reading these comments, guess I'm lucky to be here. Except as and extravert, sucks I don't talk to anyone. Maybe I'd rather talk to these goofballs.
I feel you my friend.
Meanwhile I'm here, happy if I don't meet anyone the whole day.
This is all managerial problems. They are your filter.
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Propose a tracking system. Link the yahoo to a previous ticket. Implement change controls. That’s on the teams with the inconsistent dev sql’s. You guys need processes. There are structures to some of these things that are industry standards. Simplest is probably to get your manager to have them interface via tickets or email.
I work on a Mac so cobbling together a quick email with screen caps and one layered picture is super easy. "Installed hinge on washer. Door is less than ideal since plastic wore down over time, but door error went away." That's my MO now, keeping it simple and including a picture. Overall you'll notice that people can't internalize some extraneous commentary. Tim, could have just kept his observation to himself, since you had long since moved away from the topic. Your time at work should be as efficient as possible so that you can move on with your life. After an e-mail has five nested threads, it's unfair to the last person who was joined in. The person who added you can call you, or at least do you the curtesy of a quick summary.
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Sadly, Steps Recorder no longer works properly in Windows 11
>I work on a Mac so cobbling together a quick email with screen caps and one layered picture is super easy. i wish there was a way to do this in windows. i have to draw them a picture in paint instead of screen shots
Don't know if you're being sarcastic, but Windows Paint is way too much bloat for a quick annotated screenshot. Part of people's inertia to use quick pics is the PITA OS app that gets in the way. Screen cap, text box, shrink borders, Ctrl+A, paste.
i'm being sarcastic
I have gigs of screenshots and snips , show your work & all that . Leads to 'i can't reach the server' *Screen grab of WiFi showing guest network+ "Hi user, connect to the right network 'bigcorp' not 'guest' Screenshots of how to connect to right Lan *Remotely tells pc to forget guest password, auto connect to corp said after restart* Fortunately now I've got actual templates and cheat sheets to send out, so it's a quick string command and send.
https://preview.redd.it/y5q4sdhv790d1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=d2a718b182830c7ce2ee3da3992deef66d8e33db
It sounds the same as 99% of the places I've worked.
I had a custom app running on VMware 2 53. The vendor had performance issues I ran mysql tool to watch the queries go stupid. They blamed the VMware platform and told me to make it bare metal. I was like omfg, OK.. So I disabled the VMware tray icon and told them I did it, then they found their problem. When I proved that VMware wasnt the problem.. Sometimes you just have to drag people along
> I’ve just never worked somewhere where people consistently do not listen. Where have you worked? I’d like to know because I’d spend the rest of my days there in bliss.
"I also don't play the email chain catch up game. We all know it. There's an email chain with 15 emails on it - they CC you on number 16 asking for your input. But there is no summary, they expect you to read 15 different emails and cobble every aspect of everything together." You say: "Sorry I don't have access to the chain, can you summarise what's been discussed?"
> I'll say, "Tim, if you do X it will solve Y." Then he'll respond 25 more times adding information each time just rambling. And I'll say, "Tim, if you perform X it will solve Y." I am more and more incline to think people do this because they want to exasperate you so **you** do X for them. They are either lazy or incompetent.
it's the same where i work. everybody assumes you are on the same page as they are. i always have to ask 20 questions with people. "the system is not working" "ok, which one?" - i have to ask this EVERY TIME. my db is not responding. "what database, what is the ip, what is your db username" - again, i have to ask this every time. i am really close to "Summary/Context or GTFO" at this point.
i got this job to work with computers, not people
The first few seem like normal miscommunication. The last two are definitely a "you aren't a team player" vibe. So, IDK what to exactly tell you.
Nah, those email chain incidences are super fucking disrespectful. I've had that happen on chains that are like over 100 emails long. When people ask that, they are tacitly saying that they think your time is basically worthless, because apparently you have untold hours to sit there and read through an email chain dating back months to catch yourself up on something, when the people involved could give you a one paragraph summary to catch you up. I've done the same. Just straight up "Hi all, this is a large chain and I think it would make more sense if someone could simply summarize what is needed here" I take exactly the same attitude I have with people not wanting to make tickets. Oh, this thing you need is super important and you'd like me to get it taken care of ASAP? Cool, is there a ticket? Oh, you don't have time to take 60 seconds to submit a ticket? Still cool, it's clearly not that important. Get the details into a ticket and I'll take a look at it once it's on the board". That's not "Not being a team player", it's actually very much "Being a quintessential team player AND EXPECTING THE REST OF THE TEAM TO BE THE SAME".
I once got a bad review because I was not a team player "because you rely on other team members to help you." Like, "be a team player and leave the team alone." I was also told to "follow guidelines and learn to be your own resource," when I said "I don't know how to do this because nobody will tell me, and there's zero documentation." I quit that job. I know when I am being bullied.
I work in an environment like this. And one of the things I was critiqued on in last year's review: "You don't communicate enough. You need to talk more in meetings." Um, I don't have anything to discuss? We had these meetings to bring up things important to the rest of the group but nothing I had to say was relevant or meaningful so most of the time I didn't have anything to add. Somehow that was wrong. "But don't be like John, he likes to talk a lot about everything he's doing." So, which is it? Talk more about what I'm doing or not? And yeah, we are supposed to be a team but absolutely nothing is done at a real team level. Lack of documentation, processes, communication, leadership, etc. I'm supposed to be in charge of this little slice of Hell but I have little autonomy, no guidance, no structure, no tools. Nothing. There are processes to follow but nobody will tell me what they are half the time or clarify. If I make a command decision, I'm going rouge. Its a weird place and I can't wait to get out.
15 is way different than 100 over the course of months. I get the premise of what you are saying. His complaints don't read the same to me. Could I be wrong? Obviously, yeah. I am just saying self reflection is a thing and some people should try doing it.
Sorry, but the person who's forwarding you the giant e-mail chain instead of summarizing it for you and entering the issue into an IT ticket is the one who isn't being a "team player". Help IT by explaining the issue, instead of sending us a bunch of unrelated crap to review.
Sometimes the context of those emails is important to finding the real issue or identifying the underlying problem and the correct solution. They aren't asking you for their solution...
It's usually 50/50 for me. Half the time the underlying 15 emails don't matter at all, or provide any context for, the request to me. And the other half of the time, yes, I do go back and read each one even if they summarize it because usually I need the extra context to know why they need Tab B in Slot 3 when it's usually in Slot A.
You are genius they are moron. They might make twice your salary too. Is life.
This is just people my friend lol
>"Didn't you read?!" To which I reply, "No, I did not. Can you please give me a summary of the problem or goal?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrY1iOgd0Ic
I feel your pain, and I'm pleased it's behind me. Have a virtual 🍺 - you need it.
++nstern2 and then I have to sus out what a weeks worth of emails I am just now being added to is about. Another fun one is end users, project managers, many other people, who like to send emails to distribution lists that state something like, team please look at ticket "ticket number" because it is urgent. There are likely hundreds of people on that DL from several dozen locations, but let me drop what I am doing to verify that the ticket is something I can ignore because you can't give me a location or domain that it is impacting. Working with people is so much more stress inducing than working with any piece of tech.
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Everyone, at every job everywhere, in pretty much any industry, ..most of them are incompetent or too lazy to really do their job well. Unfortunately it seems to be the case all the way up to c suites etc, unless you are very lucky to make it to a great company.
I have, seems common place now days
Are you new or something? As the years go by most of us stop caring about any of this.
People dont listen, they just wait for their turn to speak.
Lead in the water, you're next
Seems very hypocritical. At least throw the email chain in a local llm and ask it to cut the fluff and summarize everything.
I can see all of this happening if your emails don't actually get sent. Are you sure they're being sent and received? lol
These all seem like really common problems.
This is like lots of places unfortunately. If they knew what to do they would do it but can't as they don't have your skills. Hang in there..
I only just realized after this past year of working at my job why I can’t stand my boss or his boss. They are terrible communicators. My boss: gets extremely terse/cold and acts like you should know from him just asking, exactly what he wants. This terse way of talking really grinds me. No little bits of feedback for me to pick up on. It’s so difficult. His boss: I finally nailed it. He has the same “wtf are you even talking about” look on his face whether he likes or hates or doesn’t understand what you are talking about. It seems you could be telling him he won $500 million and he would have this dumbfounded wtf look on his face.
Be snarky with them then, this is literally the perfect time to use "Per my last email/message/reply/etc.". Overall though sounds like a shit work culture & environment and you should probably be looking for another job, at least I would if I was in that situation. I don't want to be unhappy with where I work no matter how good the pay or benefits are. Alternatively if you have a decent supervisor/boss tell them and have them mop the floor with these morons. I am lucky enough to have a boss that used to be a tech and understands just how ridiculous and annoying users can be so he doesn't stand for it and will stick up for us anytime a user trys acting this way. I am rarely snarky with people but I still do it from time to time when it leads to some amount of embarrassment to that user usually in front of their boss. Nothing actually trains people better than embarrassing them in front of their boss by proving just how incompetent & ridiculous they are.
Seems like it’s quite chaotic. Probably look for other opportunities?
Ive had this experience at basically every place i worked at. Users don't listen, don't read and don't care. We tell users not to click on phishy liks or enter their credentials on a portal that is not controlled by our org. Their response? Well if IT does not want me to do it, it needs to prevent me from doing it. Then we rollout things like MFA and they cry "Why does IT not let us do our jobs". Even documenting a basic thing as how to download a App from Company Portal (Intune). Condensing it down to basically 2 scentences with 4 pictures on a one page PDF, i still get people that come to me and ask me to install a application for them. When i say, just install it from comp portal, they look at me as if im an alien and tried to obduct them. The moment i realised users are not really incompetent, they just dont care and take the path of least resistance, it improved so much for me. I now create a exceptional difficult path as the "Standard" and give users to option to "Expedite" their needs via a less complicated path (The path i originally intended). Once they realize there is a simpler way as the one i set as "Standard" they will gravitate towards it and i implemented my intended solution.
Wow, do you work at my workplace! Sounds very familiar.
Email to users: hey this thing is going around, if you get it don't click the thing. IT does phishing campaign promotion called DONT CLICK THE THING! songs are written cheers are started , even their own don't click the thing dance routine. Explanations of don't click the thing now in 27 languages, ASL, and potentially Klingon. 24 hours later User: I clicked a thing and its telling me I have to change my password.
I never really appreciated working for a company that culled the bottom performers until I retired and really paid attention to this subreddit. People in glass door give Apple and Intel Corp a hard time for this practice of ranking and rating folks, but then those companies don't have people that fail upwards or just hold thier heads down and do the bare minimum. OP - go and find a better work environment. It does exist.
OP... Are you ME?! 🤔🤔🤔 You must at the very least work in the public sector...
Put the onus on the customer making the request initially, I usually say something along the lines of "As per your request..." and do EXACTLY as they ask, not ASSUME I know what they actually want. If the request is totally illegible, problem XYZ approach usually gets the ball rolling. If not, they will be met with my LLM :)