What do IT people do that keeps them so busy?

Factual Questions
1

I don’t mean this to be a “Ha! Lazy IT folks!” thread. I am genuinely interested in their duties.

At the small company I work for, we have contracted out service and a guy sees us once a month, unless we call him in for an emergency. Is the deal simply that at larger companies there are more emergencies?

But the impression I’ve had from the large corporations we deal with is that the IT department, either by design or because it has been forced upon them, has a stranglehold on computing in general. Severely restricted permissions, for example, make everyday computing in some environments exceedingly difficult.

Why has this come about? What else fills their time to the extent that at most companies I know, the IT staff require advanced scheduling to get anything done? And heaven help you if you actually need new hardware.

2

Many large companies with a dedicated IT staff take the security and integrity of their data, and that of ther customers very seriously. Therefore, machines are locked down to prevent people from installing things like Kazaa, and sharing out all of their .XLS files to the world.

Other problems that could be caused by letting anyone do whatever they want are saturation of the network bandwidth, virus and spyware infections, machines being taken over by IRC bot-nets, etc. Add into the mix the security patches and service packs for the desktop machines, the servers, and the back-end application and database software. Also, back-ups and the resulting requests for restores, users forgetting their passwords, and requests for new software installs/upgrades.

Oh, and figuring out how to supply all the software upgrades, hardware upgrades, and new toys the bosses want, all within the current IT budget.

In addition, there is inventory and asset control, monitoring and maintaining accurate records of software license usage, and complying with any records retention policies and or laws. Also research and evaluation of any new products that may be requested in the future, and other trends in the IT industry.

There’s probably a whole bunch of other stuff that is specific to whatever company or agency that is involved.

In a perfect world, with perfect users, and perfect software, there would not be much for an IT guy to do. But the world isn’t pefect, and they stay plenty busy.

Frankly, I’m glad I don’t have those headaches anymore.

3

I work in a “larger” company. There are several thousand server systems and several tenthousand client systems.

You actually need a lot of expertise to keep such a system running, I’ll name just a few:

  • clientside networking
  • serverside/backbone networking
  • different hardware specialists
  • different operating systems specialists
  • backup software specialists
  • backup hardware specialists (tape robots as large as a small house)
  • databse software specialists
  • SAN specialists
  • NAS specialists
  • different (server) application software specialists
  • power and air conditioning specialists
  • security specialists

and so on

To setup even a simple system, many of these departments have to be coordinated. If you order a server hardware the network department may also have to order new hubs or install cables. In order to ensure backup capacity a new backup-server might be necessary. The new application you plan to use on your new server might have to be approved to conform to the comany high availability or security policy. And so on.

It is just not that simple as it looks for the “IT customers”. And even though there may be many people working in IT, there are usually not enough.

cu

4

It’s not that simple. I work for one of the largest companies in the world. Our IT system is fairly open. I can install software on my machine, I have full access to the internet, we can even put new machines on the network ourselves if we need to.

My wife works for a much, much smaller organization, probably 1/100 of the size, and their IT department is so totally paranoid that their machines are locked down to the point where it can be impossible to work with them unless all you’re doing is writing Word and powerpoint documents.

Not only is that a problem for productivity in general, but the locked-down nature of the machines means that IT has to be involved in every little change on the computer, increasing their workload.

A good IT department knows that there job is to make the workers of the company more efficient and help the company run smoother. Too many IT departments are staffed by control freaks who think all users are idiots, and they become part of the problem.

5

I work at IT for a college. We do keep all lab computers locked down tight; otherwise, we’d spend all our time fixing the crap that students do to them. Some think it’s funny to wreck a computer so we have to rebuilt that.

Faculty and staff have some restrictions, usually for installing software. Often they need privileges, but we nearly always grant them (sometimes in just a few minutes, since we can set things up remotely) or install the software for them (also remotely). Since we have a small staff, we can’t spend all our time cleaning up when someone installs incompatible or dangerous software on their computer. (I swear, if you sent a virus around with the e-mail stating “If you click on this attachment, your computer will get infected with a virus,” at least 10% of users will still click on the link.

We do not restrict what you do with your computer, except for a few secretarial positions that use thin clients that have no hard drive.

But IT is involved in everything that has to do with computing, and with a staff of about 8 technicians for over 500 computer (not counting student computers), we just don’t have the staff to spend time having to fix problems the users bring upon themselves.

6

Think of it this way – an IT person for a company can resemble the Maytag washer repairman; if the computer system remains static, not much will go wrong and not very often. On the other hand, an IT person may resemble a member of the pit crew for a NASCAR team; not only do things break, but the setup is constantly being revised or tweaked to get better operation. (Fill in your own part of the metaphor for what happens when a racecar bursts into flame.)

7

That’s true to a point, but even when nothing is broken, there is always too much to do just keeping things updated, monitoring everything that is SUPPOSED to happen automatically, and checking the logs for potential problems before they become serious.

IT starts out very simple, but as the systems grow more complex and interconnected, the amount of work needed to keep it all running grows exponentially. Think of the difference in maintenance that a NASCAR car needs compared to a Honda Accord.

8

Well, there’s a lot of tickets, shiftlogs, and SOX requirements that take up hours upon hours of my time. Then after that, I do what I was actually hired to do :smiley: (job recovery and scheduling for multiple platforms).

9

Naturally. It was a metaphor, oversimplified for effect. As pointed out in the OP, they have someone come by once a month.

10

The biggest time drain with IT at large companies is the administrative overhead compared to a small company(especially with CMM, SOX and all that crap).

Scenario 1: small company.
dude calls that his script is no longer working. I look at the script find why it isn’t working. I fix it and call him back,
total time for me: 20 minutes,
total time before fix 20 minutes.
total man hours involved 20 minutes.

Scenario 2: large company.
Dude writes a ticket that his script isn’t working. Tier one support gets the ticket and calls him. They determine they can’t fix it. They send to tier 2, they call and find out they can’t fix it. I get the ticket. I call and ask what is going on. I make sure the problem is related to my sphere of responsibility, if not I transfer to another team. If it is in my sphere. I find the problem and determine how to fix it. I ftp everything to the Dev envronment. I fix the script in the dev environment. I test the script eight different ways. I schedule a meeting with Production support, change management, and release management to explain the situation and what needs to be done. Production support verifies my findings. Change management determines if the script effects any other users. They authorize release managment to update the script in production. I write a change procedure document, and back-out contingency plan. Rellease management puts the fixed script in production. Production support tests it. I call the user to verify everything is working. I write up the whole procedure into the ticket. Every other team does the same. I update the application support document to reflect the new changes. I write a new process document to explain how to make the change if it is needed again and link to the ticket. I go to the incident management team meeting to explain what happened, and what I am doing to make sure it never happens again.
total time for me: 8 hours,
total time before fix 4 days.
total man hours involved 45.

11

And let’s add in answering any and all computer-related questions that come in via email, phone or just getting stopped in the hall (“Can you show me how to do XYZ?”). We are also responsible for all training related to hardware and software, we take care of the entire phone system, moves, videoconferencing, rollouts (hardware and software, large and small-scale).

And plenty more in addition to everything else that has been mentioned. Generally speaking your IT department is responsible for an awful lot of stuff. Due to the nature of the job we often have to drop everything to fix a problem on the spot (“putting out fires”) which makes working on longer-timeline projects harder and when something does break it often results in people being unable to work effectively until it’s fixed. That’s just the way it is.

Think of it this way - Your company has a large fleet of cars (critical to the business). Every vehicle is made of hundreds or thousands of parts, every one of which comes from a different vendor. The vendors issue service bulletins all the time telling you to replace various parts (or to stop using them all together), sometimes they come by unannounced and change parts out. Everyone who drives one of the vehicles is able to open the hood and fiddle with the engine and whenever they go out on the public roads they are assaulted by unscrupulous autoparts dealers who try and replace critical parts with their own brand, while the vehicle is still moving.

Finally, there is no guarantee that everyone is building their parts to the same specs which is pretty much required for everything to work together.

OK, now you are the company mechanic. You are expected to keep all vehicles in good running order, you have to keep up with routine maintenance in addition to rescuing cars that have been in accidents. 1% downtime is considered to be a Major Problem. In many cases you are also responsible for training the drivers. Every few years the company switches from Ford to Chevy (and they don’t put all the controls in the same place) and to top it off you have to plan around the fact that on a continuing basis you will be sent a new engine and transmission to install in all vehicles (but you have to test it thoroughly first to make sure that it’ll work). And did I mention that we may be going from gas to fuel cell, with fusion power on the horizon?

On the bright side, compared to the cars 50 years ago, all your vehicles are 6 inches long, go 1000mph and get 490mpg :slight_smile:

12

And that’s just one ticket, ONE. :frowning:

13

wolfman, does that actually result in some other kind of time-savings? Is it really a more efficient system? The system you outline is what I tend to see for our customers. Seems to me most problems are just not organizational problems, but that is the strategy adopted. When 5 PhDs can’t use an instrument because it takes four IT people to volley tickets and deal with organizational issues, it seems the costs were not properly accounted for.

The company I work for has a product that interfaces with Oracle databases. One of our customers is going to access an Oracle server hosted somewhere within the bowels of the company. It has been over a year in the making and still isn’t up, and this is just latching on to an existing server, not starting anything up from scratch. Every four weeks or so we get another call asking a question that’s been answered ten times over already. It is frustrating for us and our users. While this timeline is a little excessive, it is not unusual for most companies we deal with to respond on the order of months rather than days or weeks to accomplish what seems like relatively simple tasks that could easily be addressed, at a net savings, by additional personell rather than complicated organizational schemes.

14

[quote]
wolfman, does that actually result in some other kind of time-savings? Is it really a more efficient system?

[quote]

Hell no. With SOX the big push right now, it gives masses of auditing capabilities. I’m just a code monkey, but personally I think most of the crap is a smoke and mirror show pushed by consultants(Arthur Anderson I’m pissing in your direction) making millions. It tracks effeciency at the cost of being efficient. If I get more into my thoughts we’ll be in the pit though. :mad: But, I think a core of experts, surrounded by, and teaching, junior personell, where the entire system of knowledge can be represented by 10-15 people, can deal with any disaster when needed, and can handleday to day effiently is much better.

15

And I’m actually usually a pretty good code monkey. :smack:

16

So very true. I work for one of the largest companies in the world, and I’d say there’s a lot of the latter mentality going on. Of course, I’d add that–at least in my company–almost all the users are idiots. But that’s largely because the IT people like it that way. You take away enough functionality (and I’m talking about stuff like right-clicking, basic stuff), and you basically have to think like an idiot to use it. I can’t spend five minutes on a non-admin workstation without losing my mind.

The whole audit trail aspect also makes a lot of what would be simple tasks and procedures inanely complex and difficult. You’ve got to be able to justify every little thing, and that makes it hard on big corporations like mine, because the more corrupt you are, the more paperwork you have to produce to demonstrate that you’re not. 90% of everything everybody does in our IT department comes down to meetings and paperwork. I’m not kidding. As hard as it can be to create software interfaces for your business workflows, creating an IT interface for your business is infinitely harder.

17

I think you are looking at it :smiley:

That’s like saying that the finance department holds a monopoly on finance related activities in the company. It’s like that so some boob doesn’t crash the network by installing a screensaver on his computer.

At any company that uses more than say 5 computers, there is generally an IT staff responsible for the following:

-Maintaining the network
-Managing user accounts and permisions
-Managing email
-Installing software
-Network security
-Data backups
-Developing systems
-Maintaining hardware - printers, scanners, servers, laptops,
-Tech support - Answering questions both dumb and not as dumb
erislover - The reason the systems are set up like that is because a large company (think IBM, GE or Microsoft) can have tens of thousands of computers in hundreds of offices on dozens of networks. My first job (for one week) was going tech support for Bristol-Meyer Squibb in CT. Their campus consists of a dozen buildings. It could take me all morning jus to figure out where a particular printer is located.

Companies don’t create process and beurocracy because they like making things run slower. They do it so they can make sure people don’t keep steping on each others toes and breaking each others fixes. Problem is that there is a tendency among IT folks to think that the rest of the company is there to support them, not the other way around.

18

You mean we’re not playing Doom and cruising the SDMB all day long? :smiley:

Where I’m at, the key words are document, document, document. Between SOX, GLBA, HIPAA and OCC, we write down everything just to CYA. And good lord, that sucks up the time like crazy.

User clobbers an application on a server. Calls us for help. We fix. Well… It’s more like user breaks app, and calls. We say “Please email a description of this to us” (So far, we’ve been able to keep ourselves out of the problem ticket system.) while we look into the repair. Email arrives and we forward it to the application owner, the server owner, the database owner and if it’s really juicy, the audit department. Describe the situation and proposed fix. Everyone, please reply with approval. Approvals arrive and we fix. Done? Nope. Now it’s time to document what happened, the resolution and what we will do to prevent it from happening again. :sad:

19

Ever heard that phrase “It’s easy to forget you’re supposed to be draining the swamp, when you’re up to your arse in alligators?” IT people spend a lot of time draining the swamp. The swamp is so mind-bogglingly huge that from the user’s perspective all you really see is the lily pad you’re sitting on. We try to make it so that’s all you have to see.

In a way, IT people are victims of our own success in making extremely difficult things look trivially easy from the user’s position.

Here are some big time-burners:

  1. Planning for growth of the network and servers
  2. Cost estimates
  3. Getting reamed out by the user’s director because the growth plan didn’t work.
  4. Taking dozens of calls a day from users who call individual IT techs rather than going through the help desk
  5. Meetings. Did I already say that?
  6. Conference calls. I guess those are sort of meetings.
  7. Trying out new equipment and software

Not all IT people are busy. Quite frankly some are good at building a walled fort where they surf the web all day long, looking indispensable. But many more aren’t like that.

20

A few questions (genuine interest):

Is your comapny primarily a new technology company, or does it primarily deal in manufacturing or logistics?
What sort of applications are you running? (Back office? Marketing? Product creation? Other?)
How does your open approach deal with security?