Survey - Are IT technicians all knobhe*ds?

pottssteve

Ours is full of his own self-importance, disorganised, often on lunch, rude, and a pain in the ar*e.
Is yours/are you?

unclemalc

Varies.
Two of my closest friends are IT techs and are superb at their job in every way.
The main guy at my immediate place of work is also brilliant.
The people in the main IT Dept where I work are generally awful at their job but think the world would stop if they didn't exist.

AaronH

I used to be IT tech and I always tried my best to be patient and polite to everyone but I know what you mean, I've met some real self-righteous IT plonkers in my time but most are good guys which is amazing considering what we get asked day in day out, which is the main reason I'm not in that profession any more.

pst88

Working in the IT profession (but not as a technician) I can see why their tempers might be short when having to answer the same braindead questions day in day out. Either that, or they're incompetent.

LangerDan

www.thewebsiteisdown.com

(Not entirely SFW)

hammerite

Ours is OK at getting things done, but the inequality is amazing. If I ask for something to help me do my job better though she always says no........ then I say to my boss that I need it, who usually says, "no problem". I then have to get my boss to request it and the IT tech then bumps her gums and takes ages to source the piece of kit.

Yet...... if someone from our tech support team wants something they don't have to get approval and always get the best kit!! They even have company PDA/smartphones even though they're always office based, and I put up with a battered old 5yo Nokia. I'm more senior than them, and work out of the office quite a lot, but I had to wait about 4 months before I could get something so I could just check my e-mails!! and I think I only got that because I kept paying for internet access in hotels.

When she's about my boss has taken to saying out very loud, "yeah f*ck it, if tech support can have it then we're having it too, even if we don't need it!"

Rant over!

synchronicity

I guess you've all seen this IT help desk vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LLTsSnGWMI

Clever Pun

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Simonb256

I am an IT technician, and it generally is the luck of the draw really.

I've been known to give my own company laptop to another user, to be forced to use my personal one before.

I dont play that many PC games at work either.

Yes it is generally true that if I dont like someone I shall go a little steadier in resolving there issue. I know it reflects badly, but it they cant say please/thank you or think we are below them for no apparent reason then I will take my time.

sparrowlegs78

I'm married to mine...so i'm a bit biased lol
Caz xx

attica

I too am an IT spod

We get all of the kit so that we can support the directors and their toys, if we don't know how to fix their stuff we end up looking pretty stupid and, frankly, they hold the purse strings.

Yes I hate answering the same questions time and again and yes occasionally I'll go slow on someone especially if they waltz into our office and speak to us like lackeys rather than the trained professionals that we are.

That said, one of the guys I work with is a complete social inadequate who can barely string a sentence together to a client, and the other is a game head who goes larping at the weekends and greets directors with the word "yo", both of them make me cringe and annoyingly clients keep coming back to me over them despite them being first line support and me being third.

Still it beats looking after actors which was my last profession, (sound engineering and stage management), now THEY were awkward clients!

daniel_b

It has to be said, the world of IT support is a dwindling beast, that is going to get more and more poorly qualified people employed at a fraction of the cost.

The main reason this is going to happen, is that new OS's are going to be self fixing, it's the tech trickling through from servers, for example, Blackberry servers:
Monitors all its processes, if one is down for 4 successive checks, it will restart it automatically, very little input needed from anyone.

This will filter down to peoples laptops, and soon the vast majority of support (That is needed) will be carried out remotely.

Bad for the users, and bad for the engineers - but that's the way it is going to go.
No more being able to walk up to your helpdesk and tap them on the shoulder.

Dan