It has been A Day
So, today:
I got reamed by my boss for being under-dressed (wearing T-shirts and jeans on days I knew I was going to be crawling under filthy desks rewiring things), for showing up late (being in the other office building fixing something when some office drone in the main building needed their password reset first thing in the morning), for not following the Server Change Management policy (which I was informed of for the first time at said meeting), and for telling the users I had no access to the remote servers that host their applications (which I don't, and which I was specifically told to tell them by my boss three months ago).
I dropped $500+ on my car getting the brake pads, rods, O2 sensor, and cigarette lighter fixed, but I actually don't mind, because it rides a lot more smoothly now and I think the Midas guy near work is not ripping me off anywhere near as much as the one near my home.
Also I bought a new watch.
ObITAdviceColumn: IT Managers, if you have highly motivated staff who are too busy actually fixing your network to bother with trivialities like dress codes and punching a nonexistent time clock, don't shackle them with pointless procedures and policies that you aren't willing to follow yourself. It just demotivates them and loses you any respect you might have had. Make the soulless drones at the quasi-mythical Head Office the enemy, the uncaring Olympians doling out their Byzantine rules for the torment of mortals in the branch offices. Nudge-nudge-wink-wink with your staff, letting them know that as long as they play along with the minor annoyances you'll back them when something really stupid comes down the pipe.
Otherwise, your highly-motivated staff are going to take all those detailed project plans for re-architecting the network into something reliable, efficient, and self-maintaining and fax them to the CTO the day they quit without notice.
I got reamed by my boss for being under-dressed (wearing T-shirts and jeans on days I knew I was going to be crawling under filthy desks rewiring things), for showing up late (being in the other office building fixing something when some office drone in the main building needed their password reset first thing in the morning), for not following the Server Change Management policy (which I was informed of for the first time at said meeting), and for telling the users I had no access to the remote servers that host their applications (which I don't, and which I was specifically told to tell them by my boss three months ago).
I dropped $500+ on my car getting the brake pads, rods, O2 sensor, and cigarette lighter fixed, but I actually don't mind, because it rides a lot more smoothly now and I think the Midas guy near work is not ripping me off anywhere near as much as the one near my home.
Also I bought a new watch.
ObITAdviceColumn: IT Managers, if you have highly motivated staff who are too busy actually fixing your network to bother with trivialities like dress codes and punching a nonexistent time clock, don't shackle them with pointless procedures and policies that you aren't willing to follow yourself. It just demotivates them and loses you any respect you might have had. Make the soulless drones at the quasi-mythical Head Office the enemy, the uncaring Olympians doling out their Byzantine rules for the torment of mortals in the branch offices. Nudge-nudge-wink-wink with your staff, letting them know that as long as they play along with the minor annoyances you'll back them when something really stupid comes down the pipe.
Otherwise, your highly-motivated staff are going to take all those detailed project plans for re-architecting the network into something reliable, efficient, and self-maintaining and fax them to the CTO the day they quit without notice.