What is the biggest time suck of your week?
Posted by plazman30@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 104 comments
For me it's change tickets. It takes an act of God to get a change done. It takes me at least on hour to fill out a change ticket. Then there are multiple approver groups, a lot of them requiring I enter a service request into whatever portal they chose to use (ServiceNow, JIRA, Sharepoint). Then I need to chase these teams down for approvals, because they ignore their approval requests.
If I had to guess, one change record takes me about 8-12 hours of work to from Draft→Approved.
And some teams hide behind change tickets to avoid work. I once needed permissions changed on a file that only root had access to. That's maybe 30 seconds of work. Team insisted I needed a change ticket to do the work because it was a production server. Well, that's now hours of work on my part for them to do 30 seconds.
I understand the need for change management. I don't understand the need for overbearing change management that up most of my day.
Yes, this process is broken. I tried to get it fixed, multiple. I still challenge when a new onerous change process gets put in place to "protect the stability of the enterprise," but this is not a hill I'm willing to die on. I just submit a report to my boss eack week on how much time I spend doing change ticket work and move on with my day.
It's frustrating, but at the end of the day, I still get a decent paycheck. And I could be outside in the cold weather digging a ditch somewhere. But instead I'm in my home office woking in a climate controlled environment and banging on a keyboard all day. So, I count my blessings.
Meetings used to be a big time suck. But then I just started declining a lot of them. If they really need me on, they usually ping me on Teams and tell me I need to be on that call and ask me what time works for me. This has elimiated about 50% of my meetngs.
turgidbuffalo@reddit
Waiting for other people to make decisions so I can do my own job.
NapBear@reddit
Meetings to have meetings for other meetings drives me insane. Also a time suck is getting policies approved my goodness. We are a small co too.
JazzlikeSurround6612@reddit
Ah yeah, that one pisses me off so much. There is nothing like having a meeting to talk about who should be in the meeting all for something that could be a 5 minute email in the first place and not even a meeting.
The_Long_Blank_Stare@reddit
Ah yes, but then there would be a paper trail of sorts and people couldn’t say that they didn’t say something/didn’t mean something a certain wayif it was in writing!
Well, I suppose they still could. I look at meetings as something that starts off with good intentions, but over time they only exist to shovel responsibility/accountability on someone else. And some folks use them as an opportunity to avoid work altogether because upper management thinks meetings = things getting done.
rotoddlescorr@reddit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlMU6p9OzMg
MaelstromFL@reddit
I quit a contract when the PM held a top priority meeting to discuss when we were scheduling meetings. At that very moment I knew that the project was dead!
anonpf@reddit
It’s definitely meetings. The time it takes for me to get back into the work groove after a meeting, 😔
Financial-Chemist360@reddit
Bill Burr does a great bit on the meetings to have further meetings nonsense.
The_Long_Blank_Stare@reddit
Meetings and Discussions about future purchases/projects that [still] could have been a chat thread or an email, along with people’s random wants and walk-ins.
MrCertainly@reddit
Be a Chaos Vulture
Embrace the confusion. Does the company have non-existent onboarding? Poor management? Little direction, followup, or reviews? Constantly changing & capricious goals? These are the hallmarks of a bad company…so revel in their misery. Actively seek these places out. Never correct your enemy while they're making a mistake.
Stretch the circus out as long as possible. This gives you room to coast, to avoid being on anyone's radar, etc. Restrained mediocre effort will be considered "going above and beyond." Even if you slip, you can easily blame "the system", like everyone else at the place. Every single day, week, month of this is more money in your pocket.
1944 official CIA guide for citizen sabotage of organizations: https://i.redd.it/7r0grz6dgsn81.png
Do not worry about "the environment you leave behind" when you depart a company. Do you think they're going to care about your personal well-being ~~if~~ when they lay you off?
Notice is a merely a courtesy, not a legal requirement (save for a few exceptions). Continuity of THEIR business operations is THEIR problem, not yours. They should have a plan if you accidentally got hit by a bus full of winning lottery tickets. Would they give you notice before laying you off?
Always be kind to your peers, but don't worry about them when you leave. If your leaving hurts their effectiveness -- that's a conversation THEY need with their manglement. The company left them hanging, not you.
bindermichi@reddit
Meetings… so many meetings
indigo53@reddit
Don't forget to wait until the scheduled change window..... Plus when you need something yesterday, that window seems to be 2 weeks away always.
No_File1836@reddit
Work
IT_audit_freak@reddit
Making sure changes to production servers have been appropriately approved and documented with a ticket trail.
Special_Luck7537@reddit
Just saying... I worked DBA for a publicly traded company, which means external auditing.
I would have required a ticket for your root access grant as well. Any of those kinds of files are audited by the external auditors. If I cannot prove that file was changed, then the company gets knocked for that, and I would hear about it
plazman30@reddit (OP)
I get that. The real problem is me going through 4 hours of work to get a change ticket stood up for you to run a chmod 775 command on one file.
What's even more frustrating is when it's a new server build and all my other servers were delivered with 775 on that file, but this server is 644.
The thing is I need to create a work order to get the UNIX OS team to change the permissions on the file. So, it's not like I'm not creating a paper trail. If external auditors come through, they'll see I put a request in, what the scope of work was, and who did the work.
My problem is I put the work order in AND I have to do a change ticket on top of that. And that now requires change team approval. Which means I have to wait 7 days from the day I put in the ticket to when someone is allowed to do the work. And I have to attend a change call. So, I end up on the change call and need to explain that the file was 644 and needed to be 775. And the change team doesn't have a clue what I am talking about and is more concerned with the fact that this server is "different" and perhaps we should do a full audit on the server to find out what else wrong and don't want to approve my change. So, I tell them I'll just cancel the change and order a new server instead.
So, my request to fix permissions on ONE FILE, turns into a 3 week delay.
Any change with less than 7 days lead time, is an emergency change and requires an executive sign off on it. And a same day change is a critical change and requires a c-suite executive to sing off on it.
Emergency changes require I attend 2 change calls, the regular one and the executive one. Critical changes require I attend a special change call, where my critical change can still get rejected. And if it gets approved, I still need to attend the other 2 calls the next day and get the 5th degree from whoever is running the call.
I just want to install my app, edit my config file and move on with my day. But now I've wasted days in paperwork and change calls.
Special_Luck7537@reddit
That all sounds really familiar to me. We were able to get an emergency change done in a day or two, though Our process differed in the way that you did the work order, assigned it to our group, we filled out the work order, attended the change mgmt mtg, got the approval, and made the change. Mtgs were once a week, unless an emergency change was reqd, and executive or C level approval was still reqd for those, and You had to supply code and instructions, but we made the change, unless it was some special weird one off that required a team to hit a time window.
Ok-Double-7982@reddit
Users submitting tickets for things they could google.
Also, tickets for things a reboot ends up fixing.
FX_Trades_8134@reddit
"quick question for you" that becomes a multi week project.
d00ber@reddit
My main job is a Systems Architect at a very small company that won't hire another admin tech, but instead uses an MSP. My biggest time suck is writing up documentation for them to just not follow, them not being able to do basic tasks then just doing the tasks. I tell our board this every quarterly meeting, but things will never change. They get angry if I do these tasks myself as "that's not what they pay me to do". So not only is our board unwilling to fix the problem, they are also obviously unwilling to try and understand what the problem is. Fun fun.
LForbesIam@reddit
This is when AI comes in handy. I have created my own document template and can auto generate documentation and just edit it.
Hotshot55@reddit
This is basically what I do but at a very big company.
m4ng3lo@reddit
Oh man I hate that... Creating documentation that is appropriate for OTHER people to use. Which is a lot more laborious and detailed than documentation for only YOU.
But the target audience isn't using the documents. So why are you putting in those extra man-hours just to make it palatable for an imaginary reader. frustrating
d00ber@reddit
It's especially frustrating cause I put a lot of effort into it every time. I use a documentation wiki that has copy and paste code snippets, with line by line instructions and commands. There are "Informational" buttons with links to other documentations if certain errors show up. I take lots of screen shots and I setup tables to organize screenshot right and text left.. And they couldn't even bother. It's just easier to ask me. I've taken night classes on doing technical documentation early in my career, so I'd like to think I'm pretty dang good!
UninvestedCuriosity@reddit
Totally get it. Given that the MSP is a line item of risk reduction in their minds it's a complete uphill battle to get them to trust in their local sme.
It doesn't make sense because of how risk is interpreted and signed off on. They don't really care about the individual issues. They care about being able to just say well we did all the right things to reduce risk. It has so little to do with actual good solutions and work and more to do with how management is trained to be about risk in their own silos. You see it all over the place once you begin to recognize it. That's why a lot of the recommendations will fall flat. They follow a logic that isn't from the right perspective in understanding what's actually going on.
In short your opinion is always recognized as just that. An opinion and their opinion is always considered best practice due to the risk reduction no matter how wrong they may be.
m4ng3lo@reddit
How much can you push back and say 'please refer to the documentation at (link)' ?
I do that once or twice. I copy/paste the info, and then give them a link to the knowledge article and I specify where to find the information in the article.
I do that two times (for each person and subject matter). Third time they ask, and they get a curt reply saying "did you check the documentation? I've already provided you with this information". Anything more than that and I start to involve supervisors
d00ber@reddit
I agree with you, their management pushes back to mine and mine crumble like a dry cookie! I've even kept an incident log as a separate "Project" in our ticketing system with linked tickets. We've had 10 minute tasks billed @ 4 hours and when we have a meeting to address it, somehow my bosses take away is that I should be helping them more to reduce costs. The problem is, when management doesn't want to see a problem or be involved, it won't get involved.
Big-Industry4237@reddit
The MSP is also for business continuity.
What you should try pitching is to fire the MS for another vendor instead and document their failures or come up with ways to make them follow the SLAs and procedures that YOU are documenting.
d00ber@reddit
I agree and have/am doing this. I have a log with these incidents. Things won't change unfortunately. Without giving too much information away, imagine that my company is run like a government entity. People do not like change, even if it means improvement. I don't come from this background and am very used to incident logging and quite literally link every ticket or issue in my incident management project. There are a lot, and this has been presented.
SoonerMedic72@reddit
Yeah, if the issue is the MSP not being able to follow directions, there are hundreds of MSPs you could move too!
mcdithers@reddit
God I hated working for large corporations. My work/life balance is so much better now, and I don’t have to put up with stupid people making stupid decisions because everyone is afraid to tell them they’re an idiot.
Chosen_UserName217@reddit
Checking and compressing log files
LForbesIam@reddit
When we used to use our old system change tickets it was a nightmare because we had to copy email approvals into the system.
For Service Now it is a breeze. I have created templates for everything. We can create the change directly from the RITM, apply the template and copy the specific details and hit “approve” and it launches the approvals through exchange which they can approve instantly on their phones or watches.
I can get a change through with 12 approvers to completed in about 30 minutes for an emergency change.
PM_ME_UR_COFFEE_CUPS@reddit
We have a weekly meeting where we talk about the agenda for the 3 upcoming meetings that week.
speel@reddit
We were just acquired by a larger company and holy shit. We went from ok let’s buy this product it fits our needs to, ok let’s get a project manager, let’s meet with the stakeholders, let’s company 3 different products, let’s demo all 3, lets make a meeting for this. Let’s make a meeting for that. For fucks sake, fuck your project managers, fuck your meetings I just want to implement and be done.
bbx1_@reddit
Dealing with incompetent helpdesk.
shipwrecked__@reddit
Change management as well.
Everything needs a change here and it's suffocating. As you've said, I understand the need the change management but this place takes it to another level. You'd think that for a place with a structured change management process they've have a clean environment... they absolutely do not. I was hired for my expertise but end up chasing people around and writing up change requests half the time.
CARLEtheCamry@reddit
My company, we usually go into level red around the holidays because it's our busiest time business wise. This year, they entered in in July.
That's right, a full level 3 Change restriction for 6 months of the year, have to get everythying approved by the CIO basically after 6 oither hops up the management change.
Monthly Windows Patching - Change. fuck. me.
My_Big_Black_Hawk@reddit
That’s so fucking stupid. Sounds like there’s someone up the chain who doesn’t trust their people to use common sense
CARLEtheCamry@reddit
They had a lot of issues as they continue to outsource development and support, surprise surprise.
I'm use to entering a Change for anything in production, the difference is usually my bosses' boss is enough approval for it to go. Those I get in 15 minutes. Above that it's been an ever-changing list of execs who have no idea about IT Operations, they are like "QDM Champions" and my favorite was our recent SVP who was one of some magazine's 50 best dressed in business once, she quit after like 2 months.
Whatever, I'm getting paid. Looking for greener pastures but I make decent money and no other company wants to match my current 6 weeks of vacation achieved by tenure.
RoloTimasi@reddit
At a previous job, meetings with my boss. Almost every meeting resulted in me answering the same questions because she was extremely flaky. Even when she took notes, she was disorganized and couldn't find them for the next meeting. She was one of the main reasons I left. I couldn't stand repeating myself constantly to her.
-maphias-@reddit
I’m going to guess she’s a boomer generation. Senior moments are real. I explain things to my boss over and over. The same damn things.
RoloTimasi@reddit
She was Gen-X, same as me. She was in her early 50’s. She was just very disorganized.
tibmeister@reddit
An hour to fill out a change ticket? Wow, there's some room for improvement there for sure! As for things like permissions change, etc, those should be standard changes and a good change approval process should be in place.
I am a big proponent of "If there's no change request, it didn't happen" because you need that record of why things have changed. Granted, there's always exceptions and time-sensitive things, but a good ITSM process will include standard and emergency changes just for that reason. I worked at an org that everything required a RFC, using ServiceNOW, and at first it was a pain, but it quickly became easy to navigate once I learned the process. Of course, the org had a very tightly controlled ITSM process and a CAB that would hunt you down if you did not approve your portion of a RFC in a timely manner, including having M/W/F change meetings with managers across the org to review all changes and get the process completed.
Sounds like your org needs a good CAB (Change Advisory Board) that is responsible for ensuring RFC's are approved in a timely manner. Sounds like there's gaps that are being exploited for sure.
I have worked at an org like that as well, where the change process was so horrible you just did the work and no one really every caught you, and if you needed a change by someone else, you went into malicious compliance mode and had more satisfaction from that then your actual job. I don't work for that org anymore for obvious reasons.
plazman30@reddit (OP)
The problem we have is that we have to engage other teams to do work. I don't have root access to my servers. On the UNIX Server OS Team does. And they don't do change tickets. I do the change ticket and add a task for them. So, they have zero incentive to stand up standard changes, and I can't get one stood up because I need to complete 8 successful changes in a row and then go through the exhaustive process to get a standard change stood up. And if my standard change has any kind of problem, then I lose it, and the process starts all over again.
Then we have this tug of war where some team asks for a change record and you ask them "Why do you need a change record to install tmux in the TEST environment?" And they come back and say "The change team told us we need to do this going forward." So, then I meet with the change team and ask them why they require change tickets for TEST. And they tell me, they don't. Then I schedule a WTF meeting with the UNIX OS team and the change team and no one joins the call except for me.
Our change and IT Security teams both removed themselves from IT and have their own chain of command now. We have a CSO (Chief Security Officer) and CRO (Chief Risk Officer). They both report directly to the CIO and are peers to the CTO. So now change and security don't have a manager in common with us until you get to the CIO level. Both teams did this on purpose to make escalation of their bonehead decisions as difficult as possible.
I show up every day, do my job, and collect my paycheck. But I've given up on trying to make this place better or make my work any easier. It's not worth it.
If my boss and coworkers weren't some of the best coworkers I ever had, I would have quit this place long ago and watched it burn.
tibmeister@reddit
Definitely malicious compliance for sure because the entire org is one hot mess of broken. Ever read BoFH from The Register? If not, maybe worth a read, but I would defiantly do the MC and enjoy new and better ways of exploiting the hypocrisy you have to deal with.
uptimefordays@reddit
I’m in 20-30hrs a week of meetings but that’s where all the design decisions get made, so it’s unavoidable.
-maphias-@reddit
30 hrs week of meetings? Are you middle management? If not, what actual work gets done?
uptimefordays@reddit
I wish! I’m an individual contributor but mostly on group projects!
ryanmj26@reddit
This is far from a weekly thing but whenever new users come on, it always a time suck. Theres only 2 of us in the IT department at a small company of ~100.
For office personnel: domain profile,email, email groups, software permissions for our in-house developed ERP, door access card, Microsoft products, print release setup (not always, some offices have their own) For manufacturing personnel: door access card, fingerprints for clocking in, domain profiles are a few generic ones
This does not count when I have to add/replace laptops. Group policy is broken and hasn’t worked for years so those types of things are handled locally at the device. Manufacturing employees aren’t allowed the internet, block launch of browsers, cmd, powershell, control panel, and settings so all that is locked down locally.
-maphias-@reddit
Meetings that should be emails.
Adventurous_Tea_446@reddit
For me? Monday through Friday
-c3rberus-@reddit
Pushed a new server into production, side-by-side migration of a reporting server, Win2016 > Win2022, did basic tests of reports - they either work or don't, forgot to stress test. Next day, early-am batch report jobs hammer the system, and the application server blows up. Same settings worked just fine in older version, followed by 2 days of panic troubleshooting to find a fix so I don't have to go in reverse and roll back. Uuugh! On the flip side, I have some really good documentation for when we go do this again in a few years.
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
I don’t look at it that way any more.
I do prioritize. But a ticket is a ticket is a ticket. Project ticket or service ticket. Escalation or internal.
Some conditions or people take priority. But, I’ve learned that being productive is important and all of these are productive. I work my tickets and I get shit done. I communicate and I get shit done.
I don’t look at them as a time suck for the same reason people shouldn’t look at IT as a cost suck. We get the shit done that helps others do their jobs and that’s not a cost or time suck, or you wouldn’t have us doing things. It’s part of the flow, it’s part of the team.
TwilightKeystroker@reddit
Outside of meetings, it's the fact that I have to be the personal assistant to my counterpart.
About 70% of the tickets she gets I get an immediate message like "Hey did you see this? Can I call you?"
Like... Can you RTFM or give me some context? Can you TRY?
Worst part is she has a few MS certs and 3yrs of mid-sized MSP experience.
8923ns671@reddit
Mind gaming the bosses cause they think it's reasonable to expect someone to stare at a screen for 8 hours with 100% efficiency the entire time.
ChiefButtfumble@reddit
'data driven' executives. They want to change your contract providers around to whoever is their friend/gives them kickbacks. So they want data to validate your current contracts. Then they claim their new contract offers better total cost of ownership (bullshit). In the end no money will be saved but you will work your ass off to implement their new providers.
Alaskan_geek907@reddit
Recently? Teams, doing PC replacements and the image has old team(will be updated shortly) so every user on the new pcs has to install new teams and for some reason some of them just loop so I have to run the MSIX as them.
Once installs are done will be tackling how to fully remove old team and do a local machine install for new teams
ErrorID10T@reddit
Babysitting my manager and coworkers. I have to constantly stop the entire DevOps department as soon as I hear about a project they're working on, which is inevitably weeks or months in, because they're redesigning a workflow for all of the engineers without ever consulting the engineers on what they need or even knowing what the product they're working with is in the first place.
Between that and fixing their mistakes it accounts for about half of my time.
Imagine having to explain to the DevOps manager that just moving the CI system from on-prem to the cloud will not eliminate bugs in the software or result in QA being able to identify or test bugs faster. Now imagine losing that argument because that manager lacks the vocabulary to know what you're talking about in the first place.
I'm not bitter at all, and definitely not looking for a new job ASAP.
wrootlt@reddit
It doesn't take that long to make a change here, but it is certainly very annoying and they are making it more and more confusing and cumbersome, just because they hired so many contractors or cheap labor and cannot make them to do quality work. Also, new tech management is fixated on zero downtime more than ever.
Meetings are not that bad usually, maybe 1-2 hours a day on average.
So, it is probably various random or not emails, Teams messages, etc.
Oh, actually, this reminded me. Dealing with vendor support. Explaining the issue, explaining again, clarifying, sending logs, explaining the issue again, logs again, etc. I currently have maybe 5 cases with various vendors going on. I am just a glorified email junky with engineer title. Last week AWS support pissed me off. Asked to generate logs bundle on a few AWS workspaces. One was 700 MB, another 1.2 GB. WTF? Logs weight that much? Then it was failing to upload it to OneDrive or their S3, wasted so much time dealing with that.
TotallyNotIT@reddit
Figuring out what the fuck outdated tutorials my predecessor was running to set some of this shit up the way he did.
niomosy@reddit
A Cloud Guru. Home of the, "here's a great course... if it was 5+ years ago." Complete with labs running CentOS 7 instances for your labs and ancient versions of the software.
mexicans_gotonboots@reddit
This…..fuck man I spent the second half of my day only to figure out the documentation handed to me by the MSP was on software 3 versions past.
mouse6502@reddit
Out of 1200 students faculty and staff (high school IT) there are about 5 people that take up 80% of my time. How they manage to get out of bed in the morning and dress themselves is a fucking mystery to me.
itguy9013@reddit
Compliance. I get client security questionnaires on the regular that range from 5-220 questions. Some take 5 minutes, some take multiple hours.
And then we have our own internal audits we need to do.
I feel I spend more time on compliance than I do actual security.
B3392O@reddit
Delegating, spoonfeeding, finding the appropriate balance on a per-issue basis between gently guiding rookies along and taking tasks from them because they need to be done last week and the results of their incompetence will fall on my head alone
ScriptMonkey78@reddit
Work.
phalangepatella@reddit
I spend more time directing people to create tickets instead of emailing, calling my desk, calling my mobile, texting, Teams messages, hallway conversation than I do actually spend on tickets.
Or at least it feels that way.
ObeseBMI33@reddit
Metal and oil runs. I keep dropping the damn anky during the runs
thereisonlyoneme@reddit
I am an approver of change tickets. My biggest issue is people not sharing information. Some tickets have nearly zero details. Like they open an access ticket and the reason, description, and justification fields are all "to get access." Well, yeah bozo, that was kind of implied by you creating an access ticket. Most of the time I can infer what is going on by the other info in the ticket, but the rest of the time I have to get the details. Even then our process doesn't sound as cumbersome as yours.
plazman30@reddit (OP)
And I need to add Agile.
It takes far longer to get anything done now that we've "gone Agile."
A project that should have taken 6 months to complete, took 4 YEARS under our Agile methodology. But somehow this is better.
STGItsMe@reddit
Denying change requests.
East-Background-9850@reddit
When the previous IT exec was around it was the constant and increasing requests for more updates and reports. I was spending more and more time reporting on issues rather than working on them.
Weird_Lawfulness_298@reddit
It's the unknown stuff that nibbles at your time for me.
whatyoucallmetoday@reddit
Unnecessary meetings I must attend but have no information to give or receive. It does give me opportunities to doom scroll Reddit.
whatyoucallmetoday@reddit
Yes. I was in one of those meetings when I made this comment.
cagedbleach@reddit
Assigning access to delegate mailboxes in Mimecast after termination.
Ghrislain@reddit
Reddit.
cookerz30@reddit
I put a time limit on my phone last night.
CelticDubstep@reddit
I'd have to say that it's managing software updates. We're an engineering firm and use extremely specialized software that has no way to do auto updates or manage updates, so I have to log into each and every single workstation and manually install these updates. Thankfully most of the end users are techy enough to do them on their own, but not all of them.
Life-Bell902@reddit
Meetings
SoonerMedic72@reddit
Emails. Get thousands a day. Like 98% go to a folder/delete by rule. Annoying as hell.
antons83@reddit
How-to docs. If I never have to write one, I'd be a happy tech. But the truth is, someone has to take over when I'm not around. I can't wait to have a apprentice or a junior do tickets and projects with me.
C64Gyro@reddit
Creating new users. AD is quick, Meditech is not, especially for RNs and LPNs.
illicITparameters@reddit
Meetings that don’t accomplish a motherfucking thing.
knightofargh@reddit
Scrolling my phone while thinking through the current issue. ADHD is a hell of a drug.
anima-vero-quaerenti@reddit
Email.
PandemicVirus@reddit
Chasing down documentation. Don’t get me wrong I love good documentation, but we stash it in ten different places and have inconsistent formats. Maybe it was a step by step guide in confluence, or it’s a spreadsheet file somewhere in the unending backrooms of Teams. Oh this time it was attached as a knowledge base item in salesforce. I can keep my own folder in teams, but that just proliferates the problem when colleagues want to do the same or better yet don’t want to do it at all. Just for clarity the shift in what and how to do documentation is always driven my management. “Put files related to project X here”, then “put the cost estimate for project x here instead, and the network diagram somewhere else entirely, and this time use visio instead of draw IO”.
DCJoe1970@reddit
Work!
BuffaloRedshark@reddit
meetings, especially the Agile stuff that is basically just meetings talking about the work we need to do instead of actually doing the work.
stxonships@reddit
Teams calls and Teams meetings that could have been an email. Or when people go on and on and on and on and on when it could have been decided in 5 minutes in the Teams meeting.
223454@reddit
I have a lot of small meetings with people. Before covid they were phone calls. Now they're on Teams/Webex/Skype, and I don't really understand. I guess I get that people sometimes like to see each other, or if you have a lot of people, but if it's one on one, just call. So much simpler.
matt95110@reddit
Explaining to the idiots at work that everything that touches production requires a change request or a ticket. I can't just fuck around with a production firewall or switch because you "need it done in a hurry."
bagpussnz9@reddit
having to go to work
Gummyrabbit@reddit
NERC compliance work one week per month.
BradL30@reddit
Change tickets - never heard of them !! People want shit done sometimes it’s as easy as just sending me a teams message. Sometimes people just don’t follow the appropriate ticketing system.
randomman87@reddit
I should change my job title to Meeting Coordinator
Gods-Of-Calleva@reddit
Meetings, my boss loves meetings
tacotacotacorock@reddit
Reddit.
liftoff_oversteer@reddit
Meetings. There is meetings (technical and non-technical) literally every workday almost without interruption from 08:00 to 12:00 and sometimes one or two in the afternoon as well. It's totally grotesque.
And once you're over your daily meeting marathon, you're already knackered and don't want to do real work anymore. Which is shit as well with no agency. At least for someone who used to manage large infrastructures. At least it is well paid and I'm in home office and colleagues are nice and professional. Still pondering looking for greener pastures, even with 60 years old.
-c-row@reddit
Meetings which have no productive outcome and no liability. A mail which I would ignore is still more productive than these types of meetings.
outofspaceandtime@reddit
Change management depends - everything goes through the QA department and they don’t understand 90% of what I write up, but I haven’t got a change rejected so far. It just takes days / weeks depending on their workload.
In general it depends on the week. This week the last AP of the old Wifi network got replaced and it turns out that none of the label printers were connected via wire? And NiceLabel has a 7 day retention limit of ‘connected’ printers. Very frustrating. Actually had to reinstall two APs to keep things running. Absolute time waster. Hate printers, hate stupid cost cutting measures from six years ago that skipped the RJ45 jack but went with a wifi module.
NowThatHappened@reddit
debugging a website that doesn't work through a proxy because something it needs is blocked, no, most things it needs is blocked and there's no error handling at all. Spent half a day making it work with ever more complex rules, finally got it working to be told that its no longer needed because there's an app that works just fine. Oh the joy of it... I'll get my coat.
analogliving71@reddit
the whole mess around flying usually.