Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

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The other issue is new hires aren't as simple as just popping in Active Directory and making a user account, creating a mailbox in Exchange, and calling it a day. I can do those steps in about 10 minutes in my sleep at this point.

A new hire will need between one and four, depending on their position, external accounts for various medical software and I don't make those, I have to send their basic user information to a 3rd party and then I'm at their mercy for whenever they make them. Usually it's pretty quick, but I have no guarantee nor anyway of speeding up the process if it isn't.

But it's "all IT" to the people screaming at me because the person they hired at 4:59:59 on Friday isn't working at full capacity exactly at 8:00:00 on Monday morning.
 
Dear Users: don't call any document you happen to have "specs" for a technical thing. Do not just send any document you have lying around to your technical guy and tell him "here are the specs, build the thing". Particularly when those "specs" you provided are a PowerPoint presentation to executives making a business case for why something needs to be done, with zero specifics of what to do or how it should be done.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Dear Users: don't call any document you happen to have "specs" for a technical thing. Do not just send any document you have lying around to your technical guy and tell him "here are the specs, build the thing". Particularly when those "specs" you provided are a PowerPoint presentation to executives making a business case for why something needs to be done, with zero specifics of what to do or how it should be done.
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You will never make management with an attitude like that - sweating the little details is for "them" not us!
 
catsmate said:
:eek::boggled::eye-poppi Really? You need a proper contract. I certainly get overtime rates.
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You get overtime rates, but you don't get overtime. When I was a contractor I was paid a certain amount per hour. If I worked more hours, I got paid more, but not at a higher rate. If I worked a weekend or a public holiday, I got paid at a higher rate.

As an permanent employee, I have the option for flexible working hours (flextime), but the hours in which I can do that are limited. If I work outside those hours, I get overtime, which is paid at a higher rate. And again, if I work a weekend or a public holiday, I get paid at a higher rate.
 
arthwollipot said:
You get overtime rates, but you don't get overtime. When I was a contractor I was paid a certain amount per hour. If I worked more hours, I got paid more, but not at a higher rate. If I worked a weekend or a public holiday, I got paid at a higher rate.
As an permanent employee, I have the option for flexible working hours (flextime), but the hours in which I can do that are limited. If I work outside those hours, I get overtime, which is paid at a higher rate. And again, if I work a weekend or a public holiday, I get paid at a higher rate.
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Yep, that's how it worked for me too as a contractor. You get paid for your hours at the one rate. No hours = no pay. 100 hours = 100 x hourly rate. Some clients would not vary the rate for weekends or PH's either. :(
 
Norman Alexander said:
Yep, that's how it worked for me too as a contractor. You get paid for your hours at the one rate. No hours = no pay. 100 hours = 100 x hourly rate. Some clients would not vary the rate for weekends or PH's either. :(
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Yeah I was contracting for the public service, so they were pretty good. Contrary to our reputation, the APS is actually great to work for, especially if like me you do get an ongoing position, which isn't that hard in this industry. APS awards rock.
 
arthwollipot said:
You get overtime rates, but you don't get overtime. When I was a contractor I was paid a certain amount per hour. If I worked more hours, I got paid more, but not at a higher rate. If I worked a weekend or a public holiday, I got paid at a higher rate.

As an permanent employee, I have the option for flexible working hours (flextime), but the hours in which I can do that are limited. If I work outside those hours, I get overtime, which is paid at a higher rate. And again, if I work a weekend or a public holiday, I get paid at a higher rate.
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Norman Alexander said:
Yep, that's how it worked for me too as a contractor. You get paid for your hours at the one rate. No hours = no pay. 100 hours = 100 x hourly rate. Some clients would not vary the rate for weekends or PH's either. :(
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Interesting. For us it's a baseline for 35 hours pw, all time in excess of this (and anything on Saturday) is at 1.67x, up to ten additional hours, after that the rate is 2.5x (and for any Sunday/holidays/booked time-off hours).
Also we have the Minimum Billing Period.. :)
 
I just realised that I have managed an entire day WFH with no network dropouts whatsoever! Given the proven track record for Direct Access from home, I have no idea how I managed it.
 
I'm thinking from your recent posts that we might have significantly less than six degrees of separation...
 
arthwollipot said:
I just realised that I have managed an entire day WFH with no network dropouts whatsoever! Given the proven track record for Direct Access from home, I have no idea how I managed it.
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Sorry to disappoint you but that was a dream, you've yet to start your real day...
 
Dear Users: my function is to retrieve data from Source A. Do not request things from me that rely entirely on definitions and usages that exist only in Source B. "Can you give me a list of widgets?" from Source A will not work because "widget" is defined only in Source B. If you want data on them from Source A you will need to list them all out by whatever names they go by in Source A. At this point you should be realizing that the reason Source A doesn't use that terminology is because it doesn't need to, the proper source for all widget related data is actually Source B. Please insert Source B forcefully up your rear and leave me the hell alone. Thoroughly professionally hoping you die, TM
 
TragicMonkey said:
Dear Users: my function is to retrieve data from Source A. Do not request things from me that rely entirely on definitions and usages that exist only in Source B. "Can you give me a list of widgets?" from Source A will not work because "widget" is defined only in Source B. If you want data on them from Source A you will need to list them all out by whatever names they go by in Source A. At this point you should be realizing that the reason Source A doesn't use that terminology is because it doesn't need to, the proper source for all widget related data is actually Source B. Please insert Source B forcefully up your rear and leave me the hell alone. Thoroughly professionally hoping you die, TM
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That’s like one I had from earlier this year. I tell business line manager that for their new enterprise app to work properly, the business rules for record assignment and approval levels need to be defined. They say “okay”. I look at them. They look at me. Time passes. I say “you need to provide those business rules.” Their response: “just use the ones the app comes with”. Me: “You need to provide the logic and the who , for the rules to work.” Them: “why don’t you put some together for me and then I can see whether I like them or not…”
 
Kid Eager said:
That’s like one I had from earlier this year. I tell business line manager that for their new enterprise app to work properly, the business rules for record assignment and approval levels need to be defined. They say “okay”. I look at them. They look at me. Time passes. I say “you need to provide those business rules.” Their response: “just use the ones the app comes with”. Me: “You need to provide the logic and the who , for the rules to work.” Them: “why don’t you put some together for me and then I can see whether I like them or not…”
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Aka "Do My Job For Me So I Can Be Paid Heaps".
 
Darat said:
Sorry to disappoint you but that was a dream, you've yet to start your real day...
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The followup to that is that half an hour after my shift ended, I lost all internet access for about five hours. I checked with my ISP and there was a widespread outage.

I'm back in the office today. There was a confirmed case in the building - two floors up from me. All the people from my floor who had gone up to that floor tested positive, but they wanted us all to WFH for a day to make sure.
 
Three months ago, we migrated one of our internal services from an on-premise server to the vendor's cloud-based offering. When we did so, our service name changed from "example.onprem.com" to "example.com". We spent a month shepherding our very larger user community onto the new service name.

Two months ago, we retired "example.onprem.com" completely.

A month ago, one of our users returned from a lengthy vacation, having missed the move to "example.com" entirely.

Today, she sent us a nastygram. Her complaint:

- For several weeks, her links to "example.onprem.com" have been broken.
- This is severely impacting her productivity.
- She can get to "example.com", but what about "example.onprem.com"?
- Is there any plan to fix her links?
- Why are her teammates telling her they can still get to "example.onprem.com"?

The mind boggles.
 
We're switching to ServiceNow on Monday. I don't feel sufficiently trained at this time, but there's another training session tomorrow (Friday) and I love being dumped into deep water.
 
theprestige said:
Three months ago, we migrated one of our internal services from an on-premise server to the vendor's cloud-based offering. When we did so, our service name changed from "example.onprem.com" to "example.com". We spent a month shepherding our very larger user community onto the new service name.

Two months ago, we retired "example.onprem.com" completely.

A month ago, one of our users returned from a lengthy vacation, having missed the move to "example.com" entirely.

Today, she sent us a nastygram. Her complaint:

- For several weeks, her links to "example.onprem.com" have been broken.
- This is severely impacting her productivity.
- She can get to "example.com", but what about "example.onprem.com"?
- Is there any plan to fix her links?
- Why are her teammates telling her they can still get to "example.onprem.com"?

The mind boggles.
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Hers doesn't, though.
 
arthwollipot said:
We're switching to ServiceNow on Monday. I don't feel sufficiently trained at this time, but there's another training session tomorrow (Friday) and I love being dumped into deep water.
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Like every other ticketing system, Service Now is great right up until the moment when the client ignores its basic features and starts customizing.
 
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