Dealing with none technical IT Managers

no tools to do the job ? and can't use your own "free" tools to do testing, WTF are you suppose to do / use then LOL !!

it's like hey build this house for me with out any tools and or plans..

Aw, you guys all miss the point. The manager here will get bonused because he is stopping "unnecessary" expenses. This must be a pointy-haired boss-type who can't tell between a VPN and a BMW. :rolleyes:
 
Aw, you guys all miss the point. The manager here will get bonused because he is stopping "unnecessary" expenses. This must be a pointy-haired boss-type who can't tell between a VPN and a BMW. :rolleyes:

manager with BMW = cock extension with nose right up in air..!
 
I'm free. I start a new job next month with an extra $16k as well it took me 2 weeks to find it I even had 2 offeres from 2 large companies.
 
I'm of the opinion it's better if he just randomly left and leave his bosses boss to suffer in the situation of their own creating
 
I'm of the opinion it's better if he just randomly left and leave his bosses boss to suffer in the situation of their own creating

I agree. It's a much smaller world than we think it is. Better to not burn any bridges. You never know ... Besides, if you tear down your old company, you often end up diminishing yourself. It's just not worth it.
 
I agree. It's a much smaller world than we think it is. Better to not burn any bridges. You never know ... Besides, if you tear down your old company, you often end up diminishing yourself. It's just not worth it.
Telling your employer why you're leaving is not burning a bridge. :rolleyes:
It's called an exit interview.
 
Which would traditionally be done with your boss, what is he gonna do, tell his boss that the reason he's leaving is because said boss is an idiot? Telling anybody in management that anybody else in management is an idiot is useless in 99% of the cases, regardless of how true it is it just sounds like you have an axe to grind because anybody in any position to do anything about it generally won't because acknowledging that it's a problem after some peon brings it to their attention just shows that they're pretty incompitent at their job too.
 
Telling your employer why you're leaving is not burning a bridge. :rolleyes:
It's called an exit interview.
There's a social art to the exit interview, however. You can't go in to it, guns blazing, and tell them what you really think about everything, up to and including their mother.

When dealing with management it's usually better to let them thing they are reaching their own conclusions, even if you are the one that provided all the data they are basing their determinations on. That doesn't change for the exit interview.
 
Which would traditionally be done with your boss
Exit interviews I've done are usually done by HR.

@XOR, you don't need to tell your boss he's an idiot, but you can certainly let them know you are leaving because of them. You can be nice about it, but simply telling someone your distaste for them can be a great stress releaver, even if it is in a nice way.
 
Exit interviews I've done are usually done by HR.

@XOR, you don't need to tell your boss he's an idiot, but you can certainly let them know you are leaving because of them. You can be nice about it, but simply telling someone your distaste for them can be a great stress releaver, even if it is in a nice way.

If HR is doing the exit interview, you still need to be careful. Don't forget that HR works for the company, and is not interested in protecting your rights, or your career, once you leave.

If HR (or top management) truly wants to know what's going on, they should be doing annual employee (and customer) satisfaction surveys. If people know that the results are anonymous, and you are part of a big enough pool, then that's the way.

From an "intelligent" HR management's view (and not all HR is intelligent), they need to fix issues long before an employee quits in disgust. It really costs a company a lot to replace a productive employee.

That all said, I have worked in companies where either my boss, or his boss, was a complete fool, and somehow managed to stay. When that happens, it's a sign that the HR exit interview won't make a difference anyway.

At the exit interview, just wear a s--- - eating grin the whole time, and tell them you left for more money. HR people know that's not true, but what are they going to do about that?

The only reason to "tell all" at an exit interview is "payback" to your schmuck boss. But it's funny. Two months into the new job, and you probably won't care anymore about the boss you left behind.
 
I'm of the opinion it's better if he just randomly left and leave his bosses boss to suffer in the situation of their own creating

Absolutely. If the company had a decent HR group, or if the stupid boss had a smart boss, they would spot the issues anyway, no matter what you say or don't say.
 
Exit interviews I've done are usually done by HR.

@XOR, you don't need to tell your boss he's an idiot, but you can certainly let them know you are leaving because of them. You can be nice about it, but simply telling someone your distaste for them can be a great stress releaver, even if it is in a nice way.
I've had a fairly healthy mix of exit interviews; bosses and HR.

HR exit interviews tend to be weird; most of the time, HR didn't understand the internal dynamics of the IT division, so the implications of what I might say would be entirely lost.

Boss exit interviews...well, those tended to be delicate. I have yet to work for a manager/boss who could accept blame gracefully, so placing blame on them would have accomplished nothing more than a) making me feel pretty good, and b) ensuring a negative opinion of me being left behind. Instead, I find it's best to take the tact like you found something wrong, and explain the symptoms, but that you are at a loss to explain why that's the case. Not only does management get to pretend to identify and fix the problem, but you avoid making them "wrong".

Like I said, there's an art to it.
 
I just wrote a nice letter saying thank you.

I will have an exit interview and be none committal and get out of here.

just a week and 1 day left. I have had all my admin rights removed so I can't actually do anything (I just found out when I tried to make a change for a user and coun't log in to anything, there has been no feedback from anyone why this has been done) and I am the only tech around today so all requests have had to be put on hold. I am handing over to some one who can't really config Cisco IOS or ASA (asked what the IP of the web config page was!) , calls a DC a "replicator" , didn't know what putty was, doesn't know what WinSCP is, had never used or even seen CentOS before, doesn't understand SNMP (I tried my very best to explain Cacti) has never really used Citrix before etc etc

I feel really sorry for him. He is only a temp in this position and really doesn't want it. It was offered to him full time and he turned it down.
 
I just wrote a nice letter saying thank you.

I will have an exit interview and be none committal and get out of here.

just a week and 1 day left. I have had all my admin rights removed so I can't actually do anything (I just found out when I tried to make a change for a user and coun't log in to anything, there has been no feedback from anyone why this has been done) and I am the only tech around today so all requests have had to be put on hold. I am handing over to some one who can't really config Cisco IOS or ASA (asked what the IP of the web config page was!) , calls a DC a "replicator" , didn't know what putty was, doesn't know what WinSCP is, had never used or even seen CentOS before, doesn't understand SNMP (I tried my very best to explain Cacti) has never really used Citrix before etc etc

I feel really sorry for him. He is only a temp in this position and really doesn't want it. It was offered to him full time and he turned it down.

After knowing all this, re you grinning on the inside ?
 
A little bit yes, but also sad as I like the people here but one bad egg has made it impossible to continue.

We just sent a £1000 worth of UPS to an office as a spare UPS unit.... not racked just sitting on a shelf. Mental.
 
After knowing all this, re you grinning on the inside ?

Maybe at some point, people will look at your boss and ask questions. Or maybe not. People like him have amazing "survivor skills," and might find a way to blame it all on someone else, including you. ( No kidding.) The important thing is that you're out of there.

It's your boss's problem to backfill your position. If he is having troubles there, and people notice the difference, that actually makes you look good, and maybe someone will ask you boss about why you left. Maybe.

Whatever happens, you're moving on to something better, and that is what should matter to you.
 
The scary thing now is that some companies are asking prospective employees to give up the password to their Facebook account. That should be illegal, if it isn't already.

Yeah, I am a bit late to the party...

But in the state of Illinois, this was made illegal and employers can no longer ask you for this kind of information.
 
Yeah, I am a bit late to the party...

But in the state of Illinois, this was made illegal and employers can no longer ask you for this kind of information.
I heard all sorts of fretting about this earlier in the year, but I have yet to actually read about it happening to anyone credible.
 
In the most part of my I.T career dealing with managers outside of the I.T dept can be very frustrating. Just wait until you get to Federal/Government work. Managers from other depts almost have more authority and can push for things such as unlimited web traffic; unblock facebook, using google docs, etc to help meet "business" needs. Managers outside of the dept do not understand the security implication and often times have a good relationship with the department/company ISO to get pass security best practices...

things like this sometimes just make me want to hate my job especially since I am into networking/network security. One of my biggest political suicide I had already developed was my relationship with the ISO,
 
I heard all sorts of fretting about this earlier in the year, but I have yet to actually read about it happening to anyone credible.

Yeah, all that hoopla and no one I've ever talked to has said they've been asked for Facebook information either.
 
Yeah, all that hoopla and no one I've ever talked to has said they've been asked for Facebook information either.

I have heard credible reports from people in college looking for a summer job or internship, and from people just graduating. It's entirely possible that some manager or HR type decided on their own that they wanted to review someone's personal Facebook account.

The scary part of Facebook is that it is not enough for YOU to be careful about the pictures you post. What about your friends who post pictures where they identify you in some "I did THAT, wow, not any longer" type of situation.
 
I have heard credible reports from people in college looking for a summer job or internship, and from people just graduating. It's entirely possible that some manager or HR type decided on their own that they wanted to review someone's personal Facebook account.

The scary part of Facebook is that it is not enough for YOU to be careful about the pictures you post. What about your friends who post pictures where they identify you in some "I did THAT, wow, not any longer" type of situation.
Fortunately, you can remove yourself when people tag you in their pictures.
 
oh dear,

The guy taking over from me doesn't understand RAID

He is trying to spec up some servers and its not really going well.

I have had to produce documents with step by step instructions with pictures etc for Cisco, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenServer etc,I am used to handing over the tech docs, with all the subnets, routing etc but never baby step instructions for key parts of the job. I had to produce a document on how to shutdown and bring up switch ports, how to setup trunk ports, how to setup ACLs and explain why we have a DMZ and how a DMZ works. Its more like a training manual for a fresh faced kid out of school.

This is a multi national company and this guy is supposed to be the top technical guy here! I think its true, my manager wanted me out because he was threatened by me and has decided to hand it over to some one who isn't a threat to him (although even this guy knows more than my boss!)

So now both the IT manager and the Network Admin don't understand Cisco, Citrix or basic things like RAID. Even AD replication is a total mystery to these guys.

No wonder the other company threw everything at me to get me, max holidays, max pay etc if this is the quality of the people on the market
 
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Did your "boss" tell you to do this?
Or are you doing it because the new guy asked for it?

I'd say if your boss is telling you to make these idiotic instructions it's rather ironic that he doesn't understand that this new guy doesn't know nearly as much as you.
 
Did your "boss" tell you to do this?
Or are you doing it because the new guy asked for it?

I'd say if your boss is telling you to make these idiotic instructions it's rather ironic that he doesn't understand that this new guy doesn't know nearly as much as you.
Unfortunately that's how it is when you don't ally yourself with the management. If it's a battle - you against them, and they hold all the cards, you're going to get screwed.

You have to learn how to play the game, that's all. Technical skill is only about 1/3 of the reason anyone will succeed in IT. Trying to prop yourself completely on 1 leg of a tripod will result in you falling over again and again.
 
Unfortunately that's how it is when you don't ally yourself with the management. If it's a battle - you against them, and they hold all the cards, you're going to get screwed.

You have to learn how to play the game, that's all. Technical skill is only about 1/3 of the reason anyone will succeed in IT. Trying to prop yourself completely on 1 leg of a tripod will result in you falling over again and again.

Absolutely, I've also found it's a lot of translating tech into .. normal .., those that are good at this task often succeed
 
Did your "boss" tell you to do this?
Or are you doing it because the new guy asked for it?

I'd say if your boss is telling you to make these idiotic instructions it's rather ironic that he doesn't understand that this new guy doesn't know nearly as much as you.

Yes, he told me to document how to do everything, he even wanted a step by step guide to adding devices to Cacti!

That would take some doing (and I'm not even going to try!)

The problem is that the IT manager doesn't know the first thing about IT, he doesn't even know the entrance code to the server rooms. He has been in the server room once in the last 2 years.

Yesterday, I noticed one of the aircon units had died (it was clear to see by the temperature graphs of quadrant of the server room and the warning emails!) yet no one noticed. I left it for 24 hours to see if anyone else would pick up on it.... no one did. In the end I had to say to the new guy "have you noticed the temperature at the head office server room Q4 and read the warning emails?"

Blank look... "no"

Then nothing, left it a few minutes.

Me .... "Do you think you should call some one to go to the server room floor to check it?"

Blank look.... "yes"
 
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The great part is that it's not your problem anymore. I'm all for being the bigger man, doing your job properly in the face of buffoonery but when you get the opportunity to get a little parting jab in without it being overtly malicious I say take it! Should have let the servers go into thermal shutdown before telling anyone =P
 
True, just a few more days left.

I was kicked me out of my office a few weeks ago as well, making an example of me I think.

Its mental that the manager here forces the person in my role out of the company each time.

People I work with are very worried about how this new guy will cope but that's not my problem any more.

There is a Citrix task he needs to do this week, it a very simple task of adding a new location to the farm, AD groups, permissions, programs etc and for me (with a CCA) its a few minutes work, I can see this guy is really worried about it. If we have a Citrix farm that is key to overseas business then the guy at the top needs to be able to look after it. To be honest as a XenApp CCA I know that my qualification is no where near high enough to say that I can do the job but my experience since WinFrame is.

The list of things I have done here is quite long and ow I look back it has been a massive job and a big change for the company.

I single handedly migrated their entire domain from NT4 to 2003 (now over to 2008 R2) this was 1000's of computers and users from all over the world
I have put SOPs in place for disaster recovery
I have installed proper monitoring in all our server rooms, temperature, WAN data use, VPN uptime, VPN data, humidity, entrance recording and in our underground server rooms I have floor water level monitoring just in case!
I have taken their mess of licences and made them legal, swapping them over to an MS Ent agreement from their basic Open license agreements
I have total designed and implemented projects such as new server room build, backup routines, overseas server room rebuilds, cable installs
I have introduced web filtering and monitoring
I have replaced their really old 15Kva UPS system with a brand new 20Kva with extended run time to give the head office server room over 2 hours of power in the event of a power outage (vital for our Citrix Farm)

The list goes on and on.
 
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I'd say just let them burn if they are going to do that. Maybe some friends there suffer, but maybe management will get the point.
 
I'd say just let them burn if they are going to do that. Maybe some friends there suffer, but maybe management will get the point.

I agree, and my bet is, it will burn very fast, sucks to see, ut it also sucks to see jay going through all the hell he did...
 
I'd say just let them burn if they are going to do that. Maybe some friends there suffer, but maybe management will get the point.
Problem is as soon as he leaves and things burn they are going to shout from the rooftops how it was Jay's fault and he did something malicious to hurt the company after he left.

@Jay, cover your ass for when that inevitably comes.
 
Problem is as soon as he leaves and things burn they are going to shout from the rooftops how it was Jay's fault and he did something malicious to hurt the company after he left.

@Jay, cover your ass for when that inevitably comes.

Very true, & scary. Hope this doesn't happen though..
 
So Jay, any update on your job transition? I will admit that I felt your pain last week while reading your stories. Makes us a little more appreciative of our jobs.
 
Problem is as soon as he leaves and things burn they are going to shout from the rooftops how it was Jay's fault and he did something malicious to hurt the company after he left.

@Jay, cover your ass for when that inevitably comes.

And that "inevitability" will be Jay's former boss. I think that the most professional way for Jay to cover himself is to write a memo to his boss summarizing:
What is working well
A summary list (no detail here!) of daily/weekly maintenance that Jay was doing.
What needs immediate attention
What are some possible long-range issues, e,g. if the company wants to migrate to Windows Server 2012 (and this is just a stupid example).

And of course this memo should be emailed to lots of people, including the idiot boss's boss, colleagues, and maybe even peers of his idiot boss. That's no guarantee of course, but Jay can't control what will happen after he leaves.

But I think that everyone should bear in mind that once Jay is out of there, the only real issue will be getting a reference in the future when he wants to make another job change.

One final thing that Jay should do. He should LinkIn with everyone at his current employer who was his "friend," and not a political ally of his boss.

Just my two times two cents.
 
Wow been reading through this thread and makes me realize this seems to be a fairly common thing. It makes me glad I got out of IT. The thing with IT is the job itself can be great, it's all the other BS that comes with it that is annoying.
 
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