Mediocre IT Departments

[SauRoNZA]

I don't think that's accurate.

I work in telecoms and in my company I specialise only on a certain system out of the almost 50 the company uses. If an ISP has a query about something not related to my system, I will refer them to the integration team for direction. There's a group email for them. They're about 20 people.

The problem with sending a mail to a group email address is everybody thinks someone else will reply until someone in management notices my request two weeks later and asks one specific person to reply.

If I have to thumb suck, I think we're about 300 - 400 people in IT so its impossible to know who supports or maintains which systems

Where’s the ticket system? Why is email even in existence here?

Where’s the Slack/Teams/whatever so nobody is left guessing who responded?

I’m with OP…just sounds like mediocre IT being too large and old school for its own good.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Simple answer is economics. In a large company that gets hundreds of queries daily cannot afford to pay a full team of technical experts to man the phones - spending 99% of their time answering simple questions that a non-technical person could have handled just as easy.

So they have a handful of techies that do 2nd line support on the issues that the call center can't handle.

Phones? What the **** is this ****?

Where’s the self-help guidance? The hundreds of queries shouldn’t exist in the first place.

 

[Lupus]

Phones? What the **** is this ****?

Where’s the self-help guidance? The hundreds of queries shouldn’t exist in the first place.

A lot of places CRM systems suck and corporations go for the 'cheapest' not the best.
Our IT department is so useless they come to my department to install ssl certs on browsers, ssl certs we implemented because of security they pushed us to use.
Our department is so useless we have to tell them where to get logs for the VPN solution they deployed, the fact that it takes 3 days to reinstall windows, 6 months to get a windows key and and

 

[SYNERGY]

Ugh. I'm dealing with a Jordanian company. Implemented an LMS & Financial ERP system.

The company does not log tickets, reply to emails. They will implement requests without notifying us that it's done. They frequently break something while fixing other bugs.

Complete & utter nightmare.

 

[ubercal]

A lot of places CRM systems suck and corporations go for the 'cheapest' not the best.
Our IT department is so useless they come to my department to install ssl certs on browsers, ssl certs we implemented because of security they pushed us to use.
Our department is so useless we have to tell them where to get logs for the VPN solution they deployed, the fact that it takes 3 days to reinstall windows, 6 months to get a windows key and and

whats the issue with installing ssl certs ? Would you rather not have them installed ?

 

[Lupus]

whats the issue with installing ssl certs ? Would you rather not have them installed ?

Ask the IT department they are the muppets who couldn't install them on the browsers. I had nothing against them, they wanted them rolled out, I pushed it through my web services, but of course my team ended up fielding 100s of people a day who couldn't access my web services properly cause they didn't have certs installed.
That was my only objection, if we roll it out, ensure that the users machines are fine, they were like it would be we've got automated systems that will push them yada yada.
They did not, they also had entire sections of the LAN blocking 443 and that was blamed on us as well.

 

[MrGray]

A startup is typically a small team focused on one product so everyone generally knows immediately where to route a query or how to answer it.

A large corporate can have literally thousands of IT workers spread across dozens of teams and regions with differing responsibilities, security clearances, etc etc so a simple query about an api can take days for anyone to even track down who is responsible for it. And because they’re such a behemoth they have to follow strict rules and protocols for everything otherwise there would be chaos. This is inevitable and a constant source of opportunity for smaller more agile companies to rise up and outperform until they too become unwieldy.

 

[neoprema]

Startups: IT is the core and business enables it, until the solution is viable and profitable.
Established Companies: IT is the business enabler and the Business is the core.

In one, you have skilled, experienced IT staff often not realizing high salaries to create the business. Once it establishes they either leave or become Managent/higher paying positions, leaving their positions to be filled by general and new staff.

 

[Neuk_]

I think a couple of reasons.

1) This large multinational company is likely not a IT company.
2) Often these big companies struggle with a legacy mindset, the focus is not on new but keeping what they have up and running.
3) Large multinational company have a lot of bureaucracy, decision making is slow and nobody wants to commit so the buck gets passed around.
4) HR says hire according to color and not the ability to do the work.
5) Big companies struggle to attract and retain talent, everyone wants to work for the exciting & "free to do what you want" start up because dealing with red tape is tiring.

I can attest to a lot of this as I work for a large multinational, the bureaucracy is also caused by audit requirements due to how the company is structured, we have many divisions which are companies themselves and us at group IT cannot touch their master data without prior permission for example. We are quite advanced in many ways compared to other large multinational manufacturing companies, for instance we have a well developed ERP system linked in to a well developed planning system with many BA’s who have worked for many, many years at the company.

 

[Nevar]

The Corporate world also wants to promote the Call Center agent to IT staff cause they did a course and Deserve a chance. A lot of time HR will relentlessly push this.
So IT Ends up with a person that logged call a week ago because there keyboards Num lock light was off but they did a course .

 

[deweyzeph]

My experience of IT departments in large companies is that there is only a very small core team of people who actually know what the f is going on and how everything works. And generally those people don't want to ever deal directly with the customers, other employees, etc, so they are shielded by layers and layers of drones whose sole job is to suck the will to live out of anyone trying to get an answer to a problem.

 

[Nod]

Big companies normally, from my experience, outsource big parts of their IT.
Most of the contracted IT people have a "reboot will fix it" mentality, or in one of my previous companies, the guys reinstalled your PC by default if there are any issues, without backing up anything of course.

I've had IT people try to convince me that routing issues to the new SAP server, was because of a missing "SAP module in the LAN port".
Another contracted IT company only accepted their own LAN cables. Factory shielded LAN cables were not accepted, which ok, but their LAN cables did not even make fully contact. It ended up to escalate to the CIO to be able to use our shielded cables.

 

[Bobbin]

In large companies, it's a case of the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

IMO it is of paramount importance in a large company (Every company in fact but it shows more in larger ones) to have a documented list and understanding of all the areas of responsibility. Who is responsible for Servers/OS layer, who are the application owners (Actually the most important and responsible role and yet the most overlooked - and no this isn't always the IT guy), who are the DB owners and so on.

I've encountered IT Managers who don't even know what that really means, roll out software without service contracts or due diligence, allow scope creep and just wing it. That's more common in my experience than one would think.

If you think I'm joking, I was asked by an IT Manager just the other day what a LOB application is, and they had a hard time giving me the list. Then they just put IT dept. or themselves on all the application owner columns, probably missed a bunch too. I understand it's an abbreviation, but this should be in their day-to-day lingo and should be readily available in 5 seconds.

 

[Getit]

...I haven't seen a single mention of risk and compliance, generally the bigger a company gets the more complexity is unfortunately built into systems and processes resulting in increased risk and compliance needs. I worked for a multinational IT company who thought SAFe was the silver bullet to remove the unbearable red tape...all this did was change the colour of the tape and direction it was wrapped. There was a saying I love "a fool with a tool is still a fool"...they through Rm's at introducing new tools but still didn't help the slow death of IT

 

[Virex]

I have a question.
I've been doing some contracting for a large multinational company to do some integrations.

Why is it that whenever I'm in touch with their IT departments to ask for stuff, it feels like they are a bunch of noobs who don't have answers for basic questions. IE, I ask 1 question about an API or something then it needs to go through about 30 people till I finally get an answer 2 weeks later.

Compared to when I do contracting for tech startups, questions usually gets answered before I need them and I feel like the noob.

Poor HR?

It seems like those IT departments need an AGILE COACH

 

[Fulcrum29]

My gripe with IT in general is that everyone think that they are the best when they are not. Not a single company have the same standards as others, neither does any individual, and standards get lost in translation with contractors. Companies worth their salt drills process into their employees. Companies also lock themselves into supply chains, hence their product stacks will be valued and propositioned as such, hence the available solution might not address the problem.

Just know that there are internal comms you aren’t privy to, and I have seen in the industry where the clients themselves are the unwilling players.

When you appoint a services provider, in the SLA/retainer business, it is all about the contract. Don't sign generic contracts, your reasonable requirements need to be met.

 

[requiem]

...I haven't seen a single mention of risk and compliance, generally the bigger a company gets the more complexity is unfortunately built into systems and processes resulting in increased risk and compliance needs. I worked for a multinational IT company who thought SAFe was the silver bullet to remove the unbearable red tape...all this did was change the colour of the tape and direction it was wrapped. There was a saying I love "a fool with a tool is still a fool"...they through Rm's at introducing new tools but still didn't help the slow death of IT

We evidently worked for the same company

 

[_kabal_]

It seems like those IT departments need an AGILE COACH

I don't think we should be adding the most useless role to the most useless department

 

[Emjay]

In SA it is like excellence is a barrier to success. Saffers copy their leaders.

I think a bigger barrier is the lack of skills in this country. Hiring is a frustrating and difficult process because, to be completely frank, finding valuable employees is just not possible in this environment. The good ones command massive salaries, and stacking an organization with employees who are paid way above industry rates just makes the organization completely uncompetitive. If some are found, and the time is taken to guide and mentor an employee to their potential, they up and leave because of the crazy competitiveness of very skilled people out there.

If I look at my circle of acquaintances and good friends, most of the best have left for jobs at some very desirable tech and gaming companies.

 

[Emjay]

My gripe with IT in general is that everyone think that they are the best when they are not. Not a single company have the same standards as others, neither does any individual, and standards get lost in translation with contractors. Companies worth their salt drills process into their employees. Companies also lock themselves into supply chains, hence their product stacks will be valued and propositioned as such, hence the available solution might not address the problem.

Just know that there are internal comms you aren’t privy to, and I have seen in the industry where the clients themselves are the unwilling players.

When you appoint a services provider, in the SLA/retainer business, it is all about the contract. Don't sign generic contracts, your reasonable requirements need to be met.

Yeah, for example, we had a large multinational demand that we couldn't have any changes made to their environment without 14 days' notice. This included any changes that could impact them. So at a network level as well. Want to make a change to switch or router? Wanted to make changes to the backend DPI? Nope, have to go through a weeks long change control process.