Got a new employee onboarding form after they been here for 2 hours.
Posted by Ragepower529@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 307 comments
Anyways figured I complain on reddit and then make the account.
NerdWhoLikesTrees@reddit
Is this better or worse than the offboarding form for someone who left a year ago???
SilentSamurai@reddit
I'm amazed at the amount of companies that don't think they need to notify IT that they fired someone. Seen some real old active accounts.
MortadellaKing@reddit
I run an MSP. About 10 years ago we lost a client because the owner's new girlfriend's brother "could do it cheaper". They did not disable my account for at least 5 years, because I received alerts from their SBS 2011 server. One day I signed into the RWA and it was still active! I had asked them numerous times over the years to remove my account though.
matthewstinar@reddit
I handled IT for a nonprofit. I provided them with a written contingency plan for taking over in my absence and ensured two other people had access to administrative accounts. One day I got a call from the chairman's son saying I was being unceremoniously dismissed and he was going to replace me.
8 years later I got a call from them because they fired the only person who ever listened when I spoke. (I have no idea what became of my replacement.) The board member who was supposed to have the other administrative account had no recollection of the account or my instructions. Fortunately for them my replacement hadn't touched my old account and I was able to find the password.
I can't recall if that was before or after they called me because they hired a web designer who changed their glue records to point to Wix (or something like that) without migrating the rest of their DNS records. Email was down, they couldn't remember the password to log into their registrar, and they couldn't reset the password without access to their email.
MortadellaKing@reddit
I can't believe you actually answered or returned that call.
matthewstinar@reddit
I had my reasons, but they weren't relevant here.
Coffee4AllFoodGroups@reddit
How many arms and legs did you charge them, as a consultant, for helping them out years after you no longer worked for them?
Many many years ago I worked for a company and when I was sent to a customer site my time was billed at $1,200/day - $150/hour minimum 8 hours. Today in this kind of situation I would charge at least twice that.
matthewstinar@reddit
There was no blood in that stone and all I really wanted was to do the minimum required to get them to forget about me again. I don't believe anyone who ever met me is still associated with the organization, so I should be safe now.
DeifniteProfessional@reddit
At my place, it's the office managers that tell us. But HR sometimes don't tell the office managers!
ekaftan@reddit
I left a job in 2000... and I had some stocks that were part of my severance.
I tried to sell them in 2004 and they were marked as blocked by the company. So I called company's HR.
They had never processed my exit papers. They had stopped paying my salary and then forgot about me, and in my country you have to sign exit papers and notarize them... and if you do not, its the company's fault, not the employee's one....
They were very happy I only wanted to sell the stocks and not sue them for their stupidity.
arwinda@reddit
Wait you did not request salary for the past four years? /s
ekaftan@reddit
I should have :) /s
AGenericUsername1004@reddit
And the employee didn't return their IT equipment when they left, the manager's didnt think to bother to get them to do this and now IT has to look incompetent by emailing the user a year later asking for our equipment back. The user fails to respond and we waste our times chasing them forever.
yParticle@reddit
At our company we just wait until the still-active former employee account was involved in a breach.
achbob84@reddit
Lol!
RangerNS@reddit
The reverse scream test: Lock all accounts, see who self-service resets within 30 days and who don't; those who don't must not be with the company any more.
glasgowgeg@reddit
Or they're on a client secondment, or they're on parental leave or some sort of sabbatical, or they're a consultant who only works intermittently, etc.
Plenty of reasons why someone may not log in for a few weeks.
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
We have remote users who work out of vans with only a tablet. They can go months without seeing a desktop.
MorallyDeplorable@reddit
you should really be locking and notating accounts when you have employees go on extended leaves
JwCS8pjrh3QBWfL@reddit
Oh I do love the HR tickets where you get an LOA notice beginning three weeks ago then the return from LOA ticket thirty seconds later.
yParticle@reddit
The 30 minute rule with tickets. Never respond sooner as a solid 5% of them solve themselves.
notHooptieJ@reddit
the 45 second hold "hi so and so, one moment while i switch over to those systems" before you start is as good and picks up another 10+%
iama_bad_person@reddit
We got a new HRIS system a couple years ago. It was the first one we ever had that had an API, so now as soon as someone stops being paid their account is locked and blocked.
notHooptieJ@reddit
the once a year Microsoft license audit never fails to find a few that have been gone for 11 months.
ReptilianLaserbeam@reddit
That still hasn’t returned their laptop, and you haven’t asked for it because, you know, HR never reported their termination….
BragawSt@reddit
Hello coworker
log1k@reddit
I'm still technically waiting on the off boarding for someone who was fired last week Friday.
TKInstinct@reddit
Happened to me a few times, didn't find out someone left until maybe 2 or 3 months after and that was my own discovery. No one bothered to tell us otherwise.
bitslammer@reddit
Worked for GE early in my career and got when I got home after my first day there was a FedEx envelope with a survey inside and return envelope. They wanted to ensure things were ready for you the minute you walked in the door. It asked if your manager was there to meet you at the front desk, did you get a badge made first thing, was your PC/laptop ready, were your accounts ready, were the needed apps installed, was your phone setup etc. I think it even asked if your work area had basic stationary items like pencil/pen notebook etc.
Apparently someone did a 6-Sigma study on new hire processes and found that they were paying millions a year to people to sit around inactive their first week due to poor planning. Supposedly if you dinged them on that survey someone would get chewed out.
keivmoc@reddit
That's incredible, I suppose at scale that sort of lost productivity adds up. My previous org was fairly small. I would usually get some rando I've never seen before wandering into my office, asking about a laptop and an e-mail address.
"When did you start?"
"A few weeks ago"
Efficiency was definitely not high on the priority list apparently.
reddit_username2021@reddit
We always had some spare hardware lying around as agreed with the department heads and my manager. As for user account, AD permissions, etc., it was not an issue. We had HR system integrated with AD. User accounts were inactive until the day the user started working. It was not possible to configure VoIP phone for the same reason.
New employee started with HR/ADM training, walked around the office to meet new colleagues. Preparing a new workstation should take no more than 15 minutes. In fact, we were able to backup most user profiles, migrate them to new hardware, and replace them within 15 minutes of user break.
eraserkraken@reddit
The issue is you want to establish proper process. If employee onboarding says it takes X days, you make it take X days regardless or other business units will start thinking none of your timelines and processes matter. If I get a same day request, while our onboarding policy says it takes a weeks notice; i'll maybe speed it up to 3 business days if i'm feeling generous. regardless of the fact it takes 10 minutes.
deefop@reddit
In my *very first* IT job, desktop support, we were in the same building as one of the companies call centers. It was super common for the Call center folks to bring in training classes(they hired a bunch of people at a time, for obvious reasons), and not give IT anywhere close to enough warning, so things like account setups, softphones, and in some cases physical computers would all "need" to be set up on very short notice.
A couple months into that gig, my manager got fed up with it(had been an ongoing fight). I received a ticket, she walked into my office(hilariously the only job I've ever had where I actually had an office, as a friggen desktop support guy), and told me not to do a single thing on that ticket for like at least a week. Then she went downstairs and yelled at them for it.
Point being, incentives matter, and if you never give users any incentive to actually follow process, they will continue to short circuit the process and never give a fuck. It wasn't until they felt some actual pain that they finally started following the rules.
ElectroStaticSpeaker@reddit
The IT manager who reports to me is about to be terminated for trying to fight in a similar way. We are nowhere near as dysfunctional as you describe but just saying - trying to prove a point by not doing the job isn’t always a great way to proceed.
deefop@reddit
Well, that's basically horrendous management, isn't it? You're gonna fire the person who's trying to get the company to follow established procedure, and not the people breaking process and causing constant problems?
ElectroStaticSpeaker@reddit
To be fair, I am firing the person for not doing anything at all except complaining, demanding a raise, and playing games to do less work. This is just one example of his behavior. There's a lot more I'm not gonna get into.
deefop@reddit
Totally fair. My manager was amazing, and just a few years from retirement, and also tired of people short circuiting established procedures, so the only consequence was those people stopped doing that.
fogleaf@reddit
This is the same argument I make against my wife spending her nights doing extra work for her company. "I just wish they would hire someone to help."
Why should they? You're filling all the gaps yourself.
Chocolate_Bourbon@reddit
Exactly. When my company bought another we ran into that problem. Their IT staff was used to staying late or coming in on the weekend to take care of urgent requests. My manager, their new boss, killed that practice almost immediately. In some cases the work had to go through change control first anyway.
This forced some of their staff to develop discipline about timelines etc. It also meant I had to listen a lot of complaints from their executives about how stupid all this paperwork was. Why couldn’t it be like the old days, where they could just pop downstairs and ask Jerry or Sue to just get it done? Because you sold your company that’s why. And that cowboy mentality was part of the reason you had to sell.
Gold-Temporary-3560@reddit
Military vetrans are used to following technical orders. I was once a aircraft mechanic and the repair manual would take up two shelves five feet in length. The step by step instructions were really easy to follow.
CaptainZippi@reddit
And also reducing the amount/hour they pay you (if you’re salaried)
MorallyDeplorable@reddit
I had that same issue when I managed an office, lol. Training/onboarding would never give us notice that a new employee was getting hired. I'd have them come in and demand 20 desks be set up in a day when I didn't even have the equipment on hand to do that, or come in and demand I rearrange furniture to accommodate them which wasn't my job at all.
We had multiple trainees walk out because they had been sitting at a desk without a computer for 8 hours a day for a week. Training would just call it 'shadowing' time and tell them to watch what other people were doing.
It didn't get fixed until my department manager went and complained to execs because training just didn't care how inconsiderate they were being or think it was an issue.
ReputationNo8889@reddit
At my last gig, i had to keep 2-3 Laptops deployable basically in an instant. HR for some reason could not give us a heads up that "We are in the closing rounds, expect someone to join us shortly". No they always onboarded people the same day, they joined.
They will bascially be like "Good morning, this is John he will be joining [Department], i have created a onboarding ticket 20 minutes earlier, please hand him out his equipment." I would then have to basically B-line to the storage room, pick out a device + mouse/keyboard etc. hand it out to him and then finish creating his account before his tour was over, so that he can setup his device once he sits down.
It was mental. I was lucky to get the ticket the evening before so i could at least have everything prepared in the morning.
Coffee4AllFoodGroups@reddit
Does anyone in this thread get to do chargebacks?
Sometimes IT is set up so you pay for their services out of your department's budget. If you're in that position you can charge an arm and two legs for rush services.
Where I am IT gets funded by giving all departments their budget, then taking some small x% of it to fund basic IT — handling all the common needs for cabling, computers, wifi, etc. but anything out of the ordinary incurs an extra charge out of your department budget.
Lack of planning on your part incurs over-and-above charges for rush work.
ReputationNo8889@reddit
I tried pushing for it a couple of times. Always was denied because "Then some departments could not affort what they need". At my current employer im not actually involved in the purchasing of equipment anymore, so i dont care. But i think we do some sort of "chargeback" not to departments but to subsidiaries
Reedy_Whisper_45@reddit
I would be sorely tempted to take my time and make them wait.
ReputationNo8889@reddit
Oh i was. Until the CEO came down and told me "The fuck you doing, the user needs to work"
arwinda@reddit
"Sir, this is a Wendy's, that's the best we can do without advance notice!"
Gold-Temporary-3560@reddit
I have been considering making a book called "Eliminate your single point of failure" and there are so many examples in our life ...where redundancy or fail-over or plant b or plan c ...prevents emergencies.
boli99@reddit
this is fine. its the best way to handle this kind of stuff too, as it also means you're fully prepared for broken, damaged or stolen laptops also.
still have to force them to make a ticket though, but once the ticket is made - they can have their new/replacement laptop in seconds.
ReputationNo8889@reddit
Well with Instant i mean instant. Even tho there was Intune, those devices had to be able to sign in and start working within minutes. I had to do so many workarounds to get this to work. For some reason it was acceptable that a user has to wait 30 minutes for a device to set itself up if the original was broken. But for new employees there was no such thing.
This was in addition to keeping a good amount of devices in stock and ready to be prepared.
Valkeyere@reddit
I work at a measured deliberate pace. I will not work fast to accommodate an emergency by someone else's making, withstanding anyone I'm answerable to.
If they want to pay me weekend rates to sit and make Ethernet cables, I'll make them a few hundred and get paid WAAAAAAAY more than the cost to just fucking buy them. I'm not gonna do it fast. They're gonna be the best ethernet cables we have, and be the exact lengths required so not usable in a lot of other places.
MorallyDeplorable@reddit
I have minimal experience with that stuff and tend to make a crappy cable, having me make them was just asking for trouble.
MadeADamnReddit@reddit
Lol that’s insane lmaooo
JazzlikeSurround6612@reddit
Yeah it works. I use to always rush and especially if the user was remote or at a different site, rush then ship equipment next day shipping.. Finally I has to make a big deal out of it and make people wait a few days etc and point got across. Like seriously, there is no respect for IT. These people need to go thru background and drug tests, so it's not like it's a surprise to the business users about the hire, why not give IT a heads up.
Gold-Temporary-3560@reddit
I "Thought" I was working for a good company...wow was I wrong. I was a Dummy, to not think "why are there large sections of office with empty partitioned office cubicles ? :(( It was a great job, but I did not see the "warnings" nor did I study the leadership structure. The company made 1 million a day in revenue. What i learned, was the company kept laying off engineers and support staff and outsourcing the work. Seven months after being in my job, the company cut our budget to the bone and I lost my job. my Supervisor was super angry and had a explosive outburst in the IT department meeting, because he was now responsible for the break-fix of 1,000 workstations.
IzzuThug@reddit
Props to your manager. At my last job the director and manager would just fold and make everyone drop what they're doing. People never learned or just didn't care at all. Was a very toxic environment.
Gold-Temporary-3560@reddit
I worked with toxic people that that is just sad. Did you know bad mental health in time, is one of the contributing factors to Early disease and earthly death? I will talk about this some time. I study Metabolic Disease "preventable".
ARobertNotABob@reddit
Ah, yes, the "we are service" micro-managers.
Setsquared@reddit
This post brought up something I have tried hard to forget
Many moons ago when I worked in a call centre we used to do government backed placements
We would take 20 random people they would send to us on a Monday for a 3 months at a time to get on the job training and some skills these were people who have been on unemployment benefits for a significant period of time.
The actual training would be done by a secondary company Capita who would be doing assessments of people on the programme constantly.
They seen more value terminating people out of the programme and revoking all benefits over allowing people to complete and leave with some sort of skills.
It was like a cattle market IT would provision numbered accounts which would be assigned to people.
They would have them written up on the whiteboard , refer to them by number only , name badges were by number.
If you lasted 2 weeks you got a named account and corporate uniform
If you lasted to the end of the programme you got a desk and a minimum wage role without commission for 12 months
If you applied directly for the role you would have gotten around 30% more along with commission
The difference in comp was paid back to the training company.
zero4312@reddit
I'm glad your manager stuck up for you. I've had similar issues in and out of IT both as a supervisor and hourly employee. My last time I told them if they needed it done today I needed to know yesterday. Your lack of planning does not constitute my emergency. Keep in mind I give two warnings before I just say no.
Ssakaa@reddit
As much as the "their lack of planning isn't my emergency" is a good policy, artificially delaying onboarding is a horrible spiral for the new staff. Can you imagine starting a job, and being told "IT's holding your ability to do work for ransom over a stupid technicality".. let alone getting that for a whole group at once for over a week?
jake04-20@reddit
I agree to an extent. I have been a new hire at a big corporation and waited upwards of 3 weeks for necessary access just to do my job. It had me asking myself "Do they even want me here?" "Is this going to last? It's almost as if they don't even need me". I did end up learning the delay was caused by my manager not doing her due diligence and putting in tickets ahead of time to set up my access, which was a foreshadow into how bad of a manager she'd turn out to be.
I would probably make an exception one or two times but raise it as a concern to the manager and HR or whoever handles the hiring process. But to repeatedly let it slide just further enables them to continue putting in last minute requests.
Ssakaa@reddit
The trick is to not let it slide, but play it up the chain, not down it. Emergency requests take priority. It's what they're for. Last second onboarding requests imply that's a particularly important new hire, since they weren't handled through the standards and procedures that ensure the typical lead time. Emergency requests also bump priority on, and add delay for, actual high priority projects. That hiring manager just delayed some C-level's pet project, and it's important to keep that C-level informed when that happens, including the details of who's introducing those delays.
RangerNS@reddit
Only that the hiring manager is a fuck up. It implies nothing else.
Ssakaa@reddit
But that assumption does nothing good for anyone. Assume good faith on their part, but do it at their expense. Make sure it's known. An emergency request is a highly visible thing, after all. IT's dropping everything to make that happen ASAP, so that's a lot of other people's workloads that get pushed back, and that requires communicating those impacts. So it must have been important. Important enough that upper management is aware of the emergency request and the efficiency with which IT handled it. Make sure any summary of data tied to that includes when the HR paperwork was handled, and shows who dropped the ball between the manager and HR on getting the IT request put in, of course. Just to demonstrate how important that emergency was.
RangerNS@reddit
If the common manager to the idiot and the tech agree, fine.
If the idiot just begs and screams "emergency", then its coffee time.
ka-splam@reddit
How are you missing the point this much?
Ssakaa@reddit
Well, that's an important part of making that visible. And making it cost the idiot some social capital. If everyone on the non-IT side's line up to the common manager gets roped into a "this person can't seem to follow policy, so now your day is being interrupted too"... it'll cut down on their decision to introduce that situation.
It's also why a P1 incident should get multiple directors pulled into a conference call for status tracking if they're even tangentially in the scope of impact. It's vital that they be informed of anything of such high priority. If someone put in a P1 for a password change (which requires lying in the ticket to get it to a P1, unless that password being nonfunctional is taking down a lot), a lot of important people get to remember that about them for a long time after.
My_Legz@reddit
This is really the answer. As a manager it's quite literally in your job description to escalate this higher up in any functioning organisation. Your staff have other things to do but you are the link to the rest of the organisation for efficiency, process implementation, and targets.
deefop@reddit
Incentives matter, and accountability is incredibly important. The emotions you're sharing are like textbook examples of how people become victim to narcissists and other socially manipulative individuals who take advantage of them, by trying to make them feel guilty and responsible for things that they are *not* guilty or responsible for.
Moreover, it's not even always *possible* to accomplish the requested tasks by the time they want them done, which is kind of the entire underlying point. Why do we ask for X number of days advance warning to complete xyz task? Because it takes longer than people think, we have other work to do, and we're specifically trying to avoid the exact scenario you're describing. Did you happen to read the thread title that you're in? OP received an onboarding request *after the employee had already started*.
So there is ALREADY a work stoppage of sorts, and the new employee already has a bad taste in their mouth. IT saving the day is not accomplishing anything other than allowing the individuals *who are actually at fault* to escape culpability. And you know what? The business itself feeling a little pain creatives an incentive for the root of the problem to be addressed.
This is not fundamentally limited to the examples in this thread. There are countless real and hypothetical examples of individuals in an organization ignoring process, or simply not caring, and then getting away with it because they try to use IT(not only limited to IT, either) as a scapegoat. It's important for these things to be called out and addressed, not only so that the individuals themselves are held properly accountable, but also for the health of the business.
I really have a bug up my ass about people trying to dodge accountability for their fuckups, and this particular type of fuckup is such a common trope, it's too frustrating not to deal with it head on.
Seriously, how fucking hard is it to tell HR/IT/Facilities/Whomever that you've hired an employee, they start on a certain date, and they'll need whatever equipment/resources/access is necessary in order to start doing their job?
Ssakaa@reddit
The issue I have is piss-poor targetting of reprecussions. In your example situation, the 1-week artificial additional delay (because if it takes a week to set them up, those users now take 2 weeks) doesn't hurt their manager excessively much. They'll write it off as IT not being team players to both the chain above them and the new hires, who will carry that chip on their shoulders during their whole tenure there. You clarify with the hiring manager's boss, whoever dropped the ball in HR's boss, and your own bosses on the IT side that something is going to get bumped down in priority to get these new hires handled as an out of order top priority task. You also rope in whatever C-level you have a pet project for, and make sure they know this hiring manager's incompetence is negatively impacting their project, so you can save face for the company with these new hires by fixing it.
I didn't say roll over and take it. I said don't punish the new hires that did nothing wrong.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
If it's a policy then someone above IT management had to agree to this.
Ssakaa@reddit
Sure. And that means someone above the idiot can level some repercussions for it, if the company actually cares about putting teeth behind that policy instead of having a piece of paper with no weight to it to appease IT. Artificially delaying setup for the new users is a minor inconvenience for the hiring manager, and blatantly, visibly, IT being petty and drawing a line in the sand that looks absolutely pointless to the new hire. It does more damage to IT's image, which is always an uphill battle to maintain, than it does to the person that caused the problem. As much as we would like policy to be magically unyielding, doing it in that way is being the department of "no". Nobody comes to the department of "no" if they don't have to. Nobody includes the department of "no" in project discussions before the deliverables they're getting saddled with are coming due and someone realizes noone asked them for them yet. So make it cost the idiot some clout, demonstrate that they're impeding things elsewhere through their disregard of policy, but slot the ticket in where it fits. If you can do it without the delay, and you don't have any other work that has to be pushed back to do that... then you're lying about needing the lead time. If you can honestly say "hey, we weren't notified ahead, we started that order rolling, as soon as we have hardware, we'll get it set up. As a reminder, this is why there's a 1wk lead time on that procedure" ... then you're not introducing artificial delay, the helpdesk manager doesn't have to go scream at an idiot like a child throwing a tantrum, IT shows that they're helpful where they can be, and the hiring manager is clearly the bad guy for their failure. In that instance, yes, the new hire's delayed on tools, but IT's demonstrably not the cause of it. It's uncanny how that works.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
The delay is not artificial. I have more important responsibilities than people being without a laptop for a week. We didn't just write that policy ourselves, our higherups agreed with that. I can't just drop building a client's server because our marketing department forgot to tell us they are hiring a new person.
In what universe is that supposed to happen??
deefop@reddit
All totally fair points, and my example was long enough ago that I'm likely getting the timeframes wrong, in any case. They probably ended up with some new hire call center reps that had to wait an extra day or two for their computer accounts, and since they have boat loads of learning to do that don't require that anyway, it wasn't the end of the world. I don't think we kept anyone hanging for a week.
I think my boss might have involved her director for some backup as well, but if I'm remembering right, it had been an ongoing fight for a long time, and I think my boss just hit the point where they felt that polite discussions were clearly not working to solve the problem.
Ssakaa@reddit
That mitigates a lot of it, as long as it is just a quick task (not, say, provisioning equipment et. al. too). Even then, it probably shouldn't take up to a week to fit it in. HR has to provide correct information for payroll to happen. Trigger off of the HRM to generate the account and email the manager.
deefop@reddit
Well, it was both, to some degree. Call centers have huge turnover, and so not every single new hire *required* a brand new computer, but virtually every class required at least some PC's to be imaged. We were using altiris at the time, and it wasn't the best, I saw plenty of images just fail because who knows. So for us there was actually a decent amount of mundane but time consuming labor, and I think that was part of why my boss was pissed. The people entering the requests didn't seem to understand that shit takes time, and we weren't sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for them to assign us hours of work that somehow is "urgent".
dustojnikhummer@reddit
We have been in this once. We even ran out of spares since multiple people (not new hires) needed them and we don't keep a dozen of spares. One dept hired like a day before telling us, so all we could (and were willing) to do is just give them an MS365 account so they could watch our training videos on their phone.
Laptop came in a week later. Internal procedures are important.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
Internal policies aren't a technicality. What if you have hardware on backorder and you just don't have a laptop to give them for a week?
Ssakaa@reddit
Then you have the order placed to demonstrate that you started the process. And they're a technicality in the eyes of the person whining about IT.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
My part of the process starts when they give the ticket. I then have a set time. Just because HR is not willing to follow procedures doesn't mean I will bend my priorities. I will gladly throw HR under the bus, and I have done so in the past. If the new employee wants to complain about someone they can complain about HR.
rotoddlescorr@reddit
It's not a technicality.
If we don't have a spare computer lying around, then we need to order one and that takes time.
Not to mention all the other assigned projects we have. We can't just delay those projects. We have to schedule in the time.
Ssakaa@reddit
Reality and presentation are two very different things. It's a vitally important policy to you. To the person actually in front of the new employee without equipment, it's IT being petty over a technicality. If you think management operates in reality, there are some things I hope you learn the easy way. And... then you present real sources of delay, not "and told me not to do a single thing on that ticket for like at least a week." Funny how different those two things are.
blackbyrd84@reddit
Sounds like management should address hiring managers not submitting new hire paperwork according to policy 🤷
Ssakaa@reddit
They should. And they should do it in a way that actually costs those managers something if they continue. That's a conversation that should happen well above and out of sight of the new group of hires on the production floor. It's not good for anyone to walk into a room, shoot the new guy (who's had zero opportunity to do anything wrong) in the foot, look at his manager, and say "see what happens?"
zakabog@reddit
The new guy is fine, they didn't fuck up and it's not their fault they can't work. They might even realize they're in a shitty environment where their boss can't follow simple instructions so they leave sooner rather than later.
Ssakaa@reddit
Adding to the toxic environment doesn't help foster anything better down the line if they don't leave in short order.
matthewstinar@reddit
Refusing to be complicit is not adding to a toxic environment, it's refusing to enable a toxic environment to continue festering. Covering up for entitled troublemakers is just doing the new hire dirty.
RangerNS@reddit
Some low level IT staffer taking on emergency work because a line manager is a fuckup is the definition of toxic. The line manager being a fuckup and dumping it on IT is the source of the toxicity, not accepting that the world is on fire.
Ssakaa@reddit
It's not the low level IT staffer's direct position in it, following the instruction of their boss, that's the issue (had the manager not intercepted, the next step for them would've been handing it up the chain to the people who have the job of playing office politics so the helpdesk folks don't have to). It's their manager, who was apparently high enough up the chain to pull the "go yell at an idiot that doesn't report to me" card. But that response, while justifiable for the most part, doesn't actually solve problems. It just makes people look at IT as unhelpful, hot-headed, people that say "no" when someone needs something in a hurry. The initial source of toxicity was the inconsiderate idiot of a hiring manager, but the IT manager's response was just as toxic, and while it helps set boundaries, it does so in one of the worst ways possible and costs IT a fair bit in appearances.
Elusive_Entity420@reddit
I can almost 100% clock you as upper level management. If you are, it's not you who has to work these tickets and stress every time something like this comes up. If you feel so strongly about this then I would make you handle all the requests that come in like this.
Ssakaa@reddit
That thought would terrify pretty much every one of my past managers.
Did it for years under leadership (at multiple levels) that wouldn't pick the right fights out of it. Also did it now and then with leadership that DID pick that fight when it came up. And did it the way I've said in several spots in this thread. Visibly play the good guy, save the new employee from a bad starting situation, and make it cost the person that screwed it up again appearances. You can do that when IT has a good reputation for coming through in real emergencies. Plenty of things got the "this isn't going on our priority list, and we've been asking for headcount for three years. You can do the math." treatment, but first impressions on new staff didn't.
kingbluefin@reddit
Could it be you're old and bitter because of all the extra brownnosing and teamplaying you did that didn't go anywhere because you never had an enough is enough moment and put your foot down?
You're allowed to stand up for yourself, you know, not everything has to be handled by leadership. You don't need to be come old, bitter and burnt out because you're the one bright shining light of non-toxicity in a sea of assholes for years on end.
Ssakaa@reddit
I kinda started old and bitter. Have an asshole merit badge and all. I've just let the old part catch up to me a bit more in earnest. I take it you've never played "team player" while grabbing a bigger stick, and instead got stuck in the position of just getting beatings until morale improved?
And, leadership has to be a part of the solution. If leadership is delightfully conflict averse, you can blow up all you want, but you'll get back "do it anyway, or I'll find someone else who will." Good luck with that. Boundaries require being given authority to set them. That authority doesn't magically materialize in a helpdesk lackey. And, if the random helpdesk lackey does effectively have that authority, they still lose by directly playing the bad guy. It's their manager's job to shield them from having to do that. Some of that, sometimes, means still getting the job done while the manager goes and rips the rug out from under an idiot.
I'll have you know, I have very good depth perception, actually.
And, lastly. At no point have I said "don't have boundaries", and "don't address the actual issue". All I've said, this entire thread, is place the repercussions on the person that's actually to blame, not the people who had no part in it. Someone pulls that crap with a major project, let it burn and them with it. But burning the new hire's morale outright? Nah.
blackbyrd84@reddit
How does the employee leaving because they realized the environment is shit have anything to do with your or IT in this case? Who gives a shit if they leave, that is not remotely your problem as long as you are performing your duties within company guidelines and policies.
kingbluefin@reddit
"The company was full of assholes, but when it came down to it, I was the reason the good ones stayed."
zakabog@reddit
They said it's been an ongoing battle, the manager clearly isn't getting the memo that IT can't drop everything to onboard a user because the manager fucked up, the manager is getting punished, the new employee can go so sexual harassment training while their manager learns how to properly do their job.
blackbyrd84@reddit
If you reread the original comment, it sure sounds like they were already past the step of taking it up the chain.
Ssakaa@reddit
(emphasis mine)
I did read it. That part. Right there.
blackbyrd84@reddit
“Had been an ongoing fight”. Ever hear of “enough is enough”? Our company policy states we are to be given 5 business days notice for new hires, and failure to adhere to this policy may result in delayed onboarding. I’d assume the OP policy is similar. So tell me again how the failure to adhere to company policy repeatedly is ITs problem?
Left_of_Center2011@reddit
This is the attitude that allows this situation to occur in the first place - because bad-faith dicks will slack off and then dump it on IT, because they know it will get handled. Legitimate emergencies can certainly occur that compress timelines, but ‘just making it happen’ is self-sabotaging
Ssakaa@reddit
No, no. Just make it happen noisily. Don't just roll over and take it, but don't punish the new employee for the sins of their manager.
uzlonewolf@reddit
And when they keep doing it again, and again, and again, no matter how much noise you make?
It will never be their problem until you make it their problem.
Ssakaa@reddit
If it keeps happening, you're making the wrong noise, making it along the wrong path, or upper management supports disregard of policy and procedure outright and you lost that fight before you started, so you'll get top down "make it happen" regardless of how stubborn you try to be. There's ways to saddle the person with responsibility for their disregard of the policy without sticking the new employees with a bad view of IT, the org, and a lack of tools.
OforOatmeal@reddit
Just want to say that I completely agree with you, and am surprised how much push back you're getting for suggesting that the office equivalent of throwing a temper tantrum isn't a good idea.
Unfortunately, there are situations like this where we need to play the office politics game. Learning to illustrate when someone is causing tangible downstream problems is a huge part of this. Someone at the level of a help desk tech - or even their immediate manager - won't have much sway in getting things changed laterally across departments. Something impacting a manager a level or two above - especially if they're C-suite - will DEFINITELY get eyes on it.
Ssakaa@reddit
Yeah, there's a lot of "I am the law!" types that see the situation under their foot, and not the bigger picture around here today. First impressions are clingy things... get things running like clockwork for onboarding and you get a lot of people that see IT related stuff "just works" from day one. Far better than "have to fight tooth and nail to get IT to quit acting like children and set things up for a new employee".
Even funnier, OP was even more forgiving on it. Quick rant here to share the absurdity... and then got the job done and moved on, by the look of it (with some amusement at the discussion spawned).
Pork-S0da@reddit
True, but if the manager was smart, she would say, I staff working on X, Y, and Z priorities and they cannot fulfill your short notice request. This could have been avoided if you submitted this request with proper notice. We will do our best to complete the ticket ASAP, but as of now, it looks like that will be next week.
I agree though. Going downstairs and telling them the ticket won't be complete just because isn't a great idea.
Ssakaa@reddit
Telling the IT person that could do it right now "don't touch it for a week" is punishing the new hires for their manager's incompetence. They're going to suffer for that incompetence more than enough over the course of their time in that role. Don't pit them against IT too while you're at it.
blackbyrd84@reddit
Sounds like a lotta not-my-problem. Follow company policy, and don’t blame IT when others don’t follow that policy. IT isn’t a punching bag
Ssakaa@reddit
And the new employee that had no hand in that, and is being set up to fail by IT neglecting to get them set up for a week... they're the punching bag for IT's frustrations?
mxzf@reddit
The new employee isn't really being "set up to fail", they're being set up to have a boring first week with not much to do because they don't have the ability to do anything since their manager failed to get them set up properly.
Their manager might be frustrated that the slower onboarding, but the employee's still employed and there doing their job (which ain't much at that point).
blackbyrd84@reddit
Sounds like the new employees manager should have submitted the paperwork on time!
Zncon@reddit
Which is why this info stays inside the IT department. Externally you're just busy, and prioritizing people who use the system correctly.
Ssakaa@reddit
Ah, yes, because noone can infer that IT's sitting on their hands to be stubborn about it.
Elusive_Entity420@reddit
Not if you're smart about it and lie that the equipment is being shipped and there's no spares :D
RangerNS@reddit
Is the new hire doing piece work and can't make any money for a week or on salary or hourly? How is the individual doing nothing punishing them?
Ssakaa@reddit
Mostly psychological. If you (using the term generically, not specifically you) start a role and everything around you is a bickering match to just get you the basic tools of your new job, after you start, it sets the tone that that is what you're in for with every request to IT, every cross-team project, etc., and a huge chunk of motivation goes out the window with that. If you start a role and the tone you're met with is positive, helpful, you're set up with the tools you need (even if it's not that instant, "we're making this happen" stands out), and you just generally feel you're being set up to succeed, you're more likely to be ready to dive in, learn the things you need to learn, and start reflecting that tone back on the organization. In the long run, that difference in initial tone will shape a big chunk of a person's outlook on their job for their entire time there.
RangerNS@reddit
If your manager is a fuckup and can't do simple paperwork, that seems a "your manager" problem, not an IT problem. I would assume its a management and process problem.
Probably really really important that your manager isn't a fuck up then.
And if the company cares about their employees then they should care about fuck up managers.
TKInstinct@reddit
I agree with you but if their current attempt to resolve diplomatically isn't working then maybe it's time to hit them where it hurts.
MorallyDeplorable@reddit
Exactly. The idea is to make it a problem so it gets addressed.
Ssakaa@reddit
But an artificial delay that just leaves a new hire without the tools to work and demonstrates, at the lowest levels, that the organization can't cooperate or communicate internally, just introduces more problems, and isn't likely to actually fix the real problem (the lack of cooperation and communication).
MorallyDeplorable@reddit
I think you're overthinking this. It's likely just one person who needs a wake-up call. You deliver a wake-up call by allowing them to fail a task they were assigned because you won't compensate and cover for them.
The consequences of them failing their tasks are on them, not IT.
Ssakaa@reddit
I've never really worked somewhere that it's "just one person" in that type of situation. It's always a systemic problem that needs lit on fire. More importantly, the consequences impact more than just the hiring manager, and they're just going to deflect all of that back at IT being hostile and unwilling to help when they need their new staff set up to work. So the consequences end up impacting the new employees, and they impact IT's appearances, which is already an uphill battle already with the amount we have (ok, get) to say 'no' to things. They might be a small blip of impact on the person actually responsible for causing the issue, if that.
zakabog@reddit
I'm beginning to wonder if you're a manager constantly dropping the ball on informing IT of new hires and upset because they won't drop everything to help.
I've never worked somewhere where there's a team of people and every single one of them forgets to notify IT of a new hire so often that they've declared "enough is enough."
Ssakaa@reddit
Ah, so you've been spared academia? Or just missed the cycle.
And, no, all my management activities are through ansible. If I was that person, I'd want IT to blow up visibly about it, so I can justify excluding them from meetings where their dose of reality might interfere with my pet project.
blackbyrd84@reddit
You have a lot of letters in what you are saying when all you really need to say is the hiring manager fucked up, they should have done their job, this is not an IT problem. Next ticket please.
RangerNS@reddit
I can say, as consultant who "starts a new job" in the range of 5-15 times a year, about 5% of companies actually have me setup to go on day 1.
I (granting, I'm "in IT") don't think it is an IT problem, just that no one above them with the ability to provide some budget to solve this problems GAF.
Some of these places, with onboarding processes lasting longer than 3 weeks, don't learn to GAF even after I bill and exhaust my 3 weeks of hours.
ReputationNo8889@reddit
It's so sad that you need to have mgmt backing you on this. At my place mgmt encurages this type of shit ...
rimjob_steve@reddit
I’m the team director and if someone doesn’t follow our process (which requires a two week lead time) and they spring one on us I tell them sorry you didn’t follow the rules we don’t have any computers (even tho we probably do). And they sit…. With no computer….. for days……
MadeADamnReddit@reddit
Nice!
CollegeFootballGood@reddit
A tale as old as time. This has been a problem at multiple companies for me lmao
Lonely_Protection688@reddit
Tell me about it.
superzenki@reddit
We started doing something similar. We used to get onboarding forms a day before someone started and they expected a quick turnaround. We’ve always told people that we need a 2-week minimum notice for new hires. So now when people don’t meet that deadline, we have full authority to make them wait up to two weeks past the date they submitted it for them to get their equipment.
JohnGillnitz@reddit
Decades ago I started as a temp where the IT guy had a plaque on his desk that said Failure To Plan On Your Part Does Not Constitute An Emergency On My Part. Dickish, but fair enough if he had done jack shit when things were planned. I was hired to answer the phone, but ended up teaching myself basic office IT work (nothing was locked down back then), web development, and databases because he never did anything. I guess I should thank his lazy ass for starting my IT career.
PoisonWaffle3@reddit
I've run into similar situations as well, though in a different role.
At my org, one department plans/procures/installs a piece of equipment, and they're supposed to submit a ticket to us to configure it at least two weeks before they need it to be live. It takes us about 4-6 hours to configure and test before we certify the device as ready.
On a regular basis we'd get DM's or emails (not even tickets) from people requesting that we do this for new equipment that'll be going in tonight, and some of these requests we'd get in the middle of the afternoon! Someone from my team would have to drop what they're doing and stay late to fulfill the request almost every time.
My manager had enough at one point and just told them no. No more DMs or emails, and no expedite requests. Put in a ticket and we'll have it done within two weeks, as is the policy. If a maintenance window or a launch is delayed, not our problem.
And just like that, we actually started getting tickets 😅
deefop@reddit
Yeah, 100%, when *IT* are the ones suffering for this shit, there's no incentives for the actual guilty parties to change their shitty ways.
PoisonWaffle3@reddit
True facts
SolidKnight@reddit
I had somebody show up before they were even hired. Nobody was notified—not even HR. I was asked if I could get them a computer quickly. I told them because I had prior commitments, nothing prepped, and needed to order licenses, so it would be around COB before they got anything. They said that was cool. I was then pestered every hour about when their computer would be ready. I found out this person didn't even have a purpose worked out. An owner hired a friend's kid to help them out kind of deal. I don't really care about that, but why the rush? They literally had nothing to do, and people had to invent work for them. They could have just gone through the hiring process.
whodatguyoverthere@reddit
Our stance on these situations is that they obviously had notice that they had a new hire and we give a 3 day turn around on onboarding requests. The manager will receive the logins in 3 business days from their request.
There was some grumbling from a couple offices at the beginning but they were already the problematic ones that caused this policy in the first place. Once they learned that they actually had to follow the procedure, it didn’t happen again.
jupit3rle0@reddit
This happens to me literally every week with a new hire. HR just never seems to catch up.
shogun-named-marcus@reddit
Every week? How about you put your foot down, make a form, and force them to use it?
jupit3rle0@reddit
I asked HR to let me know in advance, but some new hire still fall through the cracks and I'm getting notified day of or after their first day. I just developed a Powershell script to automate most of the onboarding process and am able to get them taken care of in moments. Not my problem!
Feeling-Yak-5686@reddit
Was it from the employee themselves?
I've had that a few times this year. "Hey today is my first day, can I have access to the system?"
Uhhh sure as soon as I verify who you are and yell at whoever didn't tell us beforehand.
red_fury@reddit
Last time this happened a department head walked up to my office door and introduced the new person. After I said hello and the niceties were recognized the department head then goes, "ok, so if we can just get so and so's laptop, we will be out of your hair". I smile and say sure thing I'll have that for you in a week. She didn't argue, she knew she fucked up.
IT_audit_freak@reddit
Yep sounds about right
CMDR_Tauri@reddit
The ol' "HR dropped the ball and now it's IT's fault", eh?
Gold-Temporary-3560@reddit
Tell them to rip out the entire network and go back to 100 file cabinates and see how they like there new network :)
DeifniteProfessional@reddit
Currently in a battle because they hired some remote workers and their internet connections suck and it's my fault they can't do their jobs.
Classic
bricksplus@reddit
As is tradition
JobaSlots@reddit
Occasionally we would get the SUPERVISOR alerting us that a new employee is starting that very day with no HR notification. Fun times
daven1985@reddit
"Thanks". As pre our process it will take 48 hours for his gear to be ready.
2manyBi7ches@reddit
HR never does shit on time, but they do keep me employed.
Live-Procedure-899@reddit
I can’t tell you how often I’ve gotten “so and so started yesterday/today, we need to set them up with a desk”. It’s amazing
bemenaker@reddit
Last time I had a problem like that, the sales manager brought the new hire into my office to ask about his laptop. I had just been told about this person 30 mins prior. That being the end of the previous day, as I was walking out the door. He tried to be a smart ass and bad mouth me to the new guy for not having it done. I looked at the new guy, and said, well considering I was only told you were being hired 30 mins ago, instead of 2 weeks ago as per procedure, I'm doing pretty good on getting you setup, and it will be ready in another 30 mins.
The manager gave me a pissed off look and left my office with his new hire. He had all new hire requests into me 2 weeks ahead after that.
Ok-Entrepreneur-5058@reddit
same thing with our human resources department at one time, they would warn us the day before, or even the day of arrival, or not at all, while we asked for at least 2 days of notice. I started by slowing down the reaction: warned in the morning, I would act at noon, then in the afternoon, then the next day, then 2 days later, the business department would complain, I would refer them to human resources who had not warned in time, it quickly got back to normal.
L0kitheliar@reddit
We tell HR that there's an automation that needs minimum 2 weeks notice before onboarding new hires. So they've got that in their own run books now
Cold_Snap8622@reddit
Wait you get onboarding forms?
yParticle@reddit
"All onboardings require a two week lead time. One week if signed off by a C-level and not an option if special hardware is requested. You submitted this request today, so expect the onboarding January 29."
(You can then expedite things internally, but make it clear to your "customer" that this is a problem they created.)
TeriyakiMarmot@reddit
I like this a lot. As infuriating as these short notices are, offering multiple solutions or an exception can give them the impression that you are offering flexibility (if C-suite approves short notice) but also setting boundaries especially if nonstandard equipment is required.
doctorevil30564@reddit
I used to get this type of crap at a previous job. It was an international company with sites in Europe and the United States. Exchange was managed by an outside company based in Europe. It took up to 48 hours for active directory to fully replicate to all on site domain controllers (this was the early 2000s, some sites used ISDN connections).
I had two departments that would not give me any pre-notice for new hires. The pre-sales department that did cold calls to companies who had filled out cards expressing interest in our product at trade shows, and our warranty department. As you can imagine pre-sales was a constant revolving door, so much so that I was able to convince the manager to just let me setup generic login accounts for temps to use. If they were able to make it all the way to becoming a full time employee then I setup accounts for them.
The warranty department manager was a total bitch, and despite numerous complaints to HR and to my manager about the need for pre-notice to give me time to get equipment shipped to me from Dell, and enough time to setup the AD account so it was fully replicated and setup in exchange, she waltzes up to my desk on a Monday morning and informs me, I hired a new person for our department, she needs equipment, a phone, and she needs email and a database account setup.
I looked at her and asked, when did you know this person accepted the job, and why didn't you go through the established procedures for a new hire to ensure everything will be setup and ready.... Crickets for about 30 seconds then she responded that she knew on Monday of last week.
I did not have a new or used Cisco phone to setup, nor did I have any extra computers, monitors, or desktops since the company insisted on running lean.
I opened up outlook and emailed my manager at our Chicago location, our local HR person, and the warranty department manager.
It was late Thursday afternoon before I got everything needed to setup the new hire. At least the AD account and Exchange email account and the Cisco phone account and extension were ready.
Friday morning was when I set up everything.
The warranty manager was beyond pissed, but she didn't do it again.
Mr-RS182@reddit
Just count the fact you got a new starter form as a win. Normally get a call from their manager asking why this random new starter IT have not been notified about can’t login.
Kerdagu@reddit
Hours? I've gotten notification a few weeks after an employee started. Hell, I've had managers get mad at me a week after someone started because they still didn't have a user or email set up, while the manager had never sent the notification about them or even mentioned their existence to IT.
CiaranKD@reddit
This wouldn’t be a problem for us. I’d say, if they need IT kit such as a laptop, it’ll be ready when it’s ready, thank HR. If it was offboarding though, I’d be pissed, but again, that’s HR’s fault. We can’t action what we’re unaware of. 🤷♂️
CVMASheepdog@reddit
2 hours. Damn thats quick. I got one yesterday that said they had been here a week already and the manager was upset they were getting email bounces.
Ohsighrus@reddit
How do you guys get HR to approve the onboarding before the employee is at your desk asking for equipment?
IdidntrunIdidntrun@reddit
If the org is discombobulated enough it's not shocking.
Last year we introduced a policy to managers/HR to give 5 business days notice at the latest. Because they kept hiring people and having said new hires start in 2 days of giving the offer.
We now have a whole automated ticketing process with new hire forms to sign and approval processes. The process is easy and it's actually not a lot of red tape but it's enough to get people to stop trying to blitzkrieg new hires. Because we don't create accounts until we get the forms and until enough days pass (but obviously will make an exception if there's a justified reason to rush someone through)
badlybane@reddit
Yea I had to build the onboarding flows and automation cause we were too cheap to buy and HRS. First or statement I build is if the start date is earlier than today.
Goldenu@reddit
This kind of thing happens everywhere. My company is usually very good about giving me a week or more notice for an incoming employee, but we just had a situation where three had to be hired immediately, and there is simply nothing to be done there but prep the gear as soon as possible. I do warn the managers that if they bring someone on and I have no equipment available, then there will be nothing I can do until said equipement arrives, but I usually have two spare Surface Pros sitting about for this exact reason. In this case, with three people, I had to pull a just-retired Surface back into service, but it will be replaced with a new unit in a few days.
0zer0space0@reddit
Many years ago, I spent nearly a month waiting for my equipment and accesses after starting a new job.
Got paid full regular hours for the whole time.
Literally got paid to play video games and other nonsense. As I couldn’t participate in anything work related.
I spent the whole time completely stressed out though that they were just stringing me along and would soon say “we decided to go another direction…”
StormSolid5523@reddit
This drives me crazy !!! We my boss and I have been telling them for 3 years “We need emails laptops and equipment” When do they start? they’re here now 😤 Good on her for yelling at them to follow procedure
uncut_macaroni@reddit
At my last job, a manager didn’t inform anyone that an employee had been fired for 6 weeks. That includes payroll. Yes, not only was network access not cut for 6 weeks, the fired employee had continued to receive a paycheck.
davidbrit2@reddit
They didn't take his stapler, did they?
Kooky-Command3536@reddit
That is a great manager that will stand up for his employees and the way it should be done.
Horkersaurus@reddit
Mostly work with small orgs, there have been a few times where we've found out about a new employee because I didn't recognize someone while I was onsite for something else.
But don't worry, they've been working normally the whole time (using someone else's account + computer).
Ssakaa@reddit
I never understood this mindset from managers and HR. Like. The first day sets a whole massive chunk of a person's tone about their new job.
Walk in, get handed every tool you could need, hand-held through any fiddly setup, and just generally feel like you're being set up to succeed? Instantly more invested in actually putting those tools to use and being a part of perpetuating that tone.
Walk into an absolute dumpster fire where it's clear noone communicates cross-team, they can't even do onboarding competently, etc? You start wondering if your paychecks are going to be reliable, if you'll ever have the tools to do your job, and how bad your first review (typically in the middle of a probationary period) is going to look as you spend all your time trying to get the things your boss should've had prepared a week before you started instead of working.
RikiWardOG@reddit
Lol it's like this most places. Especially fast growing places with an understaffed hr department. I work at a very successful company rn that I'm not worried at all about ny next paycheck. Its still like that. Its not always HRs fault either. Is it annoying, sure. Does it ruin my day, absolutely not. Its just work. I'm not going to rush to get things setup and everyone is going to be fine.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
I mean, it’s a very annoying but at the end of the day, and user support isn’t even my task. And people really just wanna do their job jobs. luckily the Oregon time and it’s quite small so there’s no middle manager, senior manager bullshit wars.
My first IT job actually they forgot to on board, luckily, I was already working within the company but I walked into their office and they’re like you’re starting today???
DeifniteProfessional@reddit
That's a record. I've had the Friday morning "Starts on Monday" before, but that's a winner
bjc1960@reddit
User needs a phone and iPad too, btw.
AGenericUsername1004@reddit
And they need it by tomorrow as they are going to the client on Friday for a big deal and if IT don't get the equipment we lose 10million contract
bjc1960@reddit
We are construction/service, with remote staff, so though the case you mention is valid, and I am sure has happened to many, ours is not exactly that. They expect IT to "walk them through" how to set up a iPhone (supervised in Intune). I have shared with HR that, "if they can find adult sites, sports sites and gambling sites, they find MFA."
AZ-Rob@reddit
HR doing HR things
PatReady@reddit
Oh, and its an emergency cause they just started.
Bright_Arm8782@reddit
I once had to tell HR that someone had started, they had no idea the person was there either (company made up of lots of smaller companies).
I offered the services of IT (Big fellows with a gym habit) to escort them from the building.
FlokiWolf@reddit
"Hey, can you get a laptop and desk all setup for a new start in my team?"
"Sure. Speak to HR to start the procedure and I'll get it sorted. When do they start?"
"Today, it's the guy sitting over there in the grey suit."
"Terrific!"
BatouMediocre@reddit
This is why I love my new job. I don't create the accounts, the head accountant does. She got tired of late paperwork for new employees so she said "I'm making the account, no paper, no account !".
AtarukA@reddit
In my current company, I was given my own arrival form and created my own account. No joke.
bukkithedd@reddit
Yep, a known problem, although we've alleviated it somewhat in the company I work for by unequivocally and VERY firmly stating that if the manager has known that they were hiring someone for weeks and not notified us in IT of said hiring, we're not going to break our backs fixing a problem THEY made.
All managers that hire people are also told that unless the new employee-form in Sharepoint isn't filled out with all the necessary information, we don't start the process. Period, full stop, do not pass go etc. That's also firmly anchored with the CEO (which we report directly to), which is nice.
Yes, sometimes we do have the odd case of someone starting that very day, but they're few and far between. Most cases where there's an issue is where people haven't filled out the damn form even though they know damn well that we don't lift a finger before that's in place.
AverageMuggle99@reddit
HR is so shit wherever I’ve worked.
Currently we have a system that auto generates accounts when people are added to the HR system. It sounds great because I don’t need to get details from HR. But they don’t remove people that leave from the HR system and I can’t delete users generated in this way. I’ve currently got about 10 users disabled in O356, waiting for HR to actually do their job and change their status in the HR system.
Co1dNight@reddit
And then they expect everything to be accessible that same day.
MrYiff@reddit
I think my record was something like 35 users with half a days notice - I was working call center IT at the time and our account managers were out visiting one of our big clients at the time and while doing their yearly presentation on how the contract was doing managed to snag even more work that the client wanted starting ASAP.
This was also back when I wasn't allowed to order anything on account so had to track down one of the owners to get his AMEX black card and phone the order through to our supplier (because we also weren't allowed to keep any spare PC's).
Thankfully in the end they realised it would a bit of time as they needed desks and even getting temps via recruitment firms would take a few days.
It ended up an even bigger clusterfuck too as at the time we only had a couple of ISDN lines for voice (worked out at 60 concurrent calls max), and when we added in all these temps it caused us to max out the phone lines so those calling on other campaigns couldnt get outside lines.
That company was a trial by fire at times, I learned a lot and got the freedom to do a lot of stuff but god it was chaotic at times.
pollo_de_mar@reddit
Old HR person no longer employed at current business made a habit of creating the onboarding ticket at 5:30 PM for people that started the next day.
mikeredstone@reddit
My fave is end of day Friday for Monday. Or last day at Xmas break for first Monday in January.
Photekz@reddit
Ticket opened wednesday at 19:00 (we leave at 17:00). Thursday and Friday are national holidays, everything is closed. Monday at 8:02 (we start at 8:00) user comes screaming into our office "I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR 4 DAYS!!!11!"
My brother in christ you have been waiting for a whole 2 business minutes, get the fuck out of our office. We had to file a complaint to HR because they guy kept screaming at us how lazy we are yada yada.
Photekz@reddit
2 hours? Rookie numbers! A few years ago I saw a guy wandering in our office that I have never met and when I asked who it was to the HR lady she said it's a new trainee that was there for 3 weeks already which prompted her to question me why I'm taking so long to setup his laptop/phone.
zer04ll@reddit
This is the way
Polar_Ted@reddit
We had one manager ask for a new laptop the day their new hire arrived. They just assumed we had a stack of them ready to go.
SilentSamurai@reddit
This is when I make an effort to introduce myself in person to the employee, let them know how to reach out and get things handled, and then let them know that you'll have their accounts and machine ready to go by the end of day since their onboarding was just submitted.
Gotta let them know to redirect that frustration from IT to HR.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
Yeah, we had this. I once got a ticket on the day (like 2 hours before) the person came in. I told them the situation and that all I could give them was a MS365 account so they could watch our training videos. It took another week for the laptop to arrive. My boss wasn't happy with the other team's lead.
Moving the blame onto the person responsible is a must.
ZAlternates@reddit
Indeed. HR is there to represent the company. Throw them under the bus as much as needed.
5redie8@reddit
You know they'd do the same for you
Ommco@reddit
That's exactly what we do. That's HR responsibility to submit onboarding on time.
sauvignonsucks@reddit
Just a sec, need to remove private emails from a SaaS solution that was never approved by IT
gleep52@reddit
only two hours?! MAN - not sure why you're complaining! /s
Feel your pain my man.
I set up an automation process that now requires HR to enter the data into our primary finance system which then creates users if it is done correctly. If it is not, we forward the helpdesk tickets to them and mark the ticket "waiting on HR" - surprisingly - things have sorted themselves out rather nicely.
KBunn@reddit
Only 2 hours? They're spoiling you.
ocdtrekkie@reddit
You got it within a week of them starting? NICE!
wrt-wtf-@reddit
That’s fast… I’ve seen them take anywhere up to a month to surface in some businesses.
ShakataGaNai@reddit
That's bad. When I was still actively in charge of IT, I told the HR department 5 business days minimum notice. Oh and we only started people on Monday at 9am, because that was the good ol days of in office, and IT did onboarding training only once a week.
Honestly, HR didn't mind, they liked the structure. Recruiting? Was much less thrilled. But after a while they got used to it. We'd let them break the rules about once a quarter, to be "good teammates" if needed, and sometimes unusual hires (like a new C-Level) - but they knew the rest of the time it was a no go.
ispoiler@reddit
Nice. I got an offbording ticket for somebody thats been gone for about a year now today
Genoblade1394@reddit
Hahahaha! Try a manager giving the new employee their credentials then going on vacations. I’m recovering deleted important business process files as we speak
achbob84@reddit
Lol typical. I usually get asked if they have login credentials as they’re being introduced to me.
Meteoro55@reddit
Ooh I had that happen alot of times!! My favorite is pushing the employee through the system to get his account activated; hope there is a laptop ready or have to do a fresh install with all software needed. Fun times!!
realCptFaustas@reddit
Automate it and never be bothered by this stuff again?
Year is 2025 why are you creating accounts by hand?
sumZy@reddit
Can we automate our sex robot to give laptop to user too?
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Everything is automated besides the shell. I don’t trust people do and put in those details.
realCptFaustas@reddit
You can automate it to wait for confirmation/approval actions and proceed from there?
sonic10158@reddit
I’m never told of new employees until they’ve already started…
Ganthet72@reddit
I know you're just venting so know you're not alone and we feel your pain!
For some of the users I've had in my career that would be considered advanced notice! Had one call me to complain that their new employee had been there for a week and had no access. When I asked about a new user request they told me it wasn't their job. I told him it's not my job until I have a ticket.
Silver_Python@reddit
And then for good measure, you raise a ticket with your cyber security team (or individual, or the ghost who supposedly manages security risk) and let them know of the attempted social engineering attack where someone attempted to convince you to create a new user account without following proper procedure.
Ssakaa@reddit
"Their name didn't show up in my tea leaves this morning. Check back tomorrow."
CursedWereOwl@reddit
Haha I have seen this like for everything to be done in my company it can take a week or two because of the process
Secret_Account07@reddit
Ya know, in my desktop days I would cover for managers the first few years. I’d even take the blame so the new employee doesn’t have a bad perception of their manager.
I stopped doing that. If an employee asked I would state why. Not in a negative or mean way but just answer their question- unfortunately we didn’t get your onboarding request for equipment until xyz. Sorry about that
Most managers learned eventually. Not all.
I do not miss desktop.
illicITparameters@reddit
That’s it??
Come back when the person has been there for almost a full day before they’re entered into the HR system “officially”….. my client, a 2,000-user org, last week.
Brett707@reddit
better than my last job. We would get a nasty letter saying My 6 new employees have been trying to work for 2 weeks and they still don't have login credentials. Why are you taking this long to set up users?
I would go look in the tickets and see that nope no tickets for new users at this site. Then I would sit up at 10 pm making user accounts and logging them into workstations and setting up their profiles.
ColXanders@reddit
URGENT! THIS NEW EMPLOYEE CAN'T DO THEIR JOB BECAUSE I DIDN'T DO MINE!
joe_schmo54@reddit
That ain’t shit, had my dumbass users put in a ticket 2 days after someone started
blue_canyon21@reddit
This happened constantly at my old job. Finally, my manager decided that it's a mandatory 4-day lead time on all onboarding tickets. Even if the onboarding process took a couple hours, we were to get accounts and equipment ready and then store the equipment until the morning of the 4th day.
We had so many managers and employees get so mad at us for a while. All we were instructed to say was, "It's very well documented that the onboarding process can take anywhere from 4 to 7 days to complete. If your request was submitted the day you/they were hired, that's an HR timing issue."
Wasn't too long before we started getting onboarding tickets 1 or 2 weeks before the persons first day.
Nu-Hir@reddit
2 hours? I've gotten them two months after an employee started.
reol7x@reddit
Generally, we've got it down pretty good at my org. We get new hire tickets with a couple weeks notice now from HR.
Every once in a while some exec decides to "hire" someone and asks us to expedite it. Yes sir, as soon as HR sends us the paperwork I can get a tech started, we'll have him done in a couple days.
We've got a class of newbies starting Friday, 50 people. Major software update being planned for this weekend. Exec came by today and asked how soon we could get his new hire going (that he JUST asked us for 30 minutes ago)....the response of early next week sometime was met with "how can I expedite it?".
Well....you can talk to HR about rescheduling the 50 person onboarding class, or tell the CEO we need to postpone the software update we've got planned.
Oh, ok next week is fine I guess ..
(Sigh)
Artistic-End807@reddit
This is where having an automated process has saved my butt. I created a custom ticket form that actually does the process of creating an account with their correct permission sets and such.
If they don't do it, users don't get created. Plain and simple.
StuM91@reddit
"When are we getting the laptop and login credentials for our new user that started yesterday?"
Me: "What new user?"
grakef@reddit
for 2 hours only? That's pretty nice. Before we changed to our new HR system it wasn't uncommon for a user to be at the job a few days before requesting creds would happen and then a few days for the username and password to be made. I got to tidy my office for a week with the occasional meet and greet. It was hilarious when they would ask for my email in the event they needed me for something IT related (trying to skip putting in a ticket). All I could tell them for a week is I don't have one.
evolutionxtinct@reddit
You’re lucky they usually get a free lunch from us before we even give them an ID badge…
Miguelitosd@reddit
I've been at my current company for 27 years now (!) and when I was hired the onboarding process was 2-1/2 days long. There were 2 full days of going over a lot of into, filling out paperwork, learning about a lot of basics like meeting maker and eudora for email (it was '97), etc. There was even a long period of learning company history and a trivia game they'd made about said info. I don't recall all the details of the last 1/2 day but we wouldn't actually go to our new office/seat until the end of all that.
Over the next few years it was pared down more and more. After I moved over to the IC Engineering division support role, we spent a chunk of our time imaging the Sun workstations they used and installing them whenever a NERF (New Employee Request Form) came in. The "rules" were that they were supposed to put said NERF in like 2 weeks ahead of time for all the various things required by HR, IT, etc.. there was accounts admin that made all the computer accounts, we needed to know to get said workstation (when required) ready and installed. After a couple more years it degraded to the point that we'd get a NERF around 2pm on Monday for an engineer that was hired and started that same morning and was basically sitting there twiddling their thumbs due to lack of a workstation (this was before everyone got a laptop too).
Key_Kong@reddit
First time?
bughunter47@reddit
Did they start yesterday by any chance and have local IT support report users have access issues?
GoldenEagle1992@reddit
Dang did I write this?
thatkidnamedrocky@reddit
Easy way to resolve this issue if you're the only one responsible for it is to just call out sick for maybe one or two days and make them sit around. They will for sure make it a point to reach out sooner.
mqatrombone@reddit
Ideally, creating the record in the HR system assists with account creation
Difficult_Idea1770@reddit
5 business day lead time, totally best effort against other priorities outside that. Approvers need to be accountable and comply with the process. If not, and not a unique exception, they should learn they need to comply.
Corporate Services and IT shouldn't always cover up the mess people make. Sometimes, things need to fail in order to improve.
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
That happened multiple times at my last job. At least it would have if any of the users bothered with onboarding forms. What actually happened was the phone would ring and the voice on the other end would say "Hi, I'm here with N, they started today. What's their login?"
Arawan69@reddit
Damn, you lucky SOB, your HR has an onboarding form!!!! Been asking my HR department to work one up for two years now.
ciabattabing16@reddit
Well how are they going to fill out the form until they get there! /s
notHooptieJ@reddit
2 hours after? shit.
ive gotten "so and so has been here 2 weeks and still doesnt have x"
"who is so and so?, and if they are a new hire their manager needs to fill out the new user worksheet!"
Thangleby_Slapdiback@reddit
Where should we show up with the pitchforks?
I'm there!
anonymousITCoward@reddit
Wait until you get the termination notice for a guy they let go 3 months ago lol... HR, silly rabbits
hennyV@reddit
lol, we got an onboarding form written in pen. "Drive access: all" I wish I was joking
Craig__D@reddit
“Need setup ASAP”
alloygeek@reddit
My record was 3 weeks. They'd been with the org for 3 full weeks before someone notified IT. Best part is they were sharing the manager's creds in "the meantime"... yeah it ended about as well as you can imagine.
taker25-2@reddit
2 hrs. that's really cute. Try having a new employee who's been employed for over 3 months just to find out that the hiring manager never communicated to the IT dept about the new hire doesn't have access to emails.
Ssakaa@reddit
Why didn't the new hire email IT themse--- oh.
accidental-poet@reddit
I've gotten those.
FROM: Rando@gmail.com
TO: ITguy@Company.com
Subject: Email account.
Hi, I started last week, can you set up an email account for me please?
Response: Crickets
haulingjets@reddit
5 - (days advanced notice) = how long it will take to create accounts based on "current workload".
dracotrapnet@reddit
Got one for you, new hire sent resume via gmail, email got held. Someone somewhere in IT got word same name got hired, need computer and email/ad account around Friday 3:30 pm a trello card was made. Monday 10:21 am, someone else in the department newbie is going into puts in a ticket "hey this guy needs a login to the workstation E's used to use." E was just terminated Friday. I'm not sure HR even knows...
jkdjeff@reddit
“John can’t log into his laptop. We need him to work on something today. Fix ASAP.”
“Who is John?”
Enough_Pattern8875@reddit
And all the new laptops you had on hand are being used as loaners for employees traveling or as replacements. Sounds about right 😂
Ok-Basil9923@reddit
lol my company sometimes has employees sitting for two weeks two hours is nothing …
Blaugrana1990@reddit
We have a client who will have the new person call us.
"They told me to call you and you would set everything up"
I have no clue who you are, what device you are going to work on and what access you'll need. Have your manager submit a ticket and if your lucky I still have some time today to sort it out.
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.
Lyques_D_Poucee@reddit
SMH J guess this is a common issue everywhere
TEverettReynolds@reddit
Last time something like this happened, I had a meeting with my team. And I did. And when the manager came chasing me down the hall, I explained to her that... I had a meeting.
She huffed and puffed. I told her it was a very important meeting, and turned and left the building.
I had a lunch meeting with my team to celebrate a team member. Even my boss was there. Three hours later when we all came back, it was almost time to leave, so she got nothing.
They have to feel the pain or else they just expect it all, all the time.
DJDublin@reddit
Ugh. My last job, HR would send out "please welcome John Smith, starting on Monday" emails to the entire company. Guess when I found out about the new hire? I told my manager about it and he basically told me to deal with it. So glad I left.
elpollodiablox@reddit
Isn't that the SLA?
cungachanga@reddit
Had this constant struggle- 1-2 days onboarding’s. My manager was sending angry emails to his manager and nothing changed for 2 years. I implemented a onboarding process where manager has to fill the form for new hire- software access and etc. i used to constantly remind managers to fill the form. One day i got 2 days onboarding. Didnt tell my manager, didnt remind other dep manager to fill the form. Onboarding day came in- hr reached me out for equipment, i stated nothing is ready(pretend to be surprised and wont be since manager didnt fill out onboarding form. Hr called director- director called me i explained that i cannot read managers mind and guess what employee needs( i new 100% what is needed but pretended that have no idea)- the process was not followed and its not my fault. Hr was pissed, director had my back- after HR had to feel on their skin the consequences everything got changed- any onboarding that doesn’t allow 2 weeks i was getting calls negotiating the date with me when i can do it. 2 years angry emails did nothing, 1 time hr had to out their ass on the line and apologize- things changed
forever_zen@reddit
Well why didn't you order a laptop for the employee you didn't know about too? You're telling me this VP of senior strategy planning in emerging markets is getting a USED laptop?!
Wolfram_And_Hart@reddit
One May we got 23 interns, laptops had not even been ordered. Our big boss got pissed, my manager replied, “We told you we weren’t just ordering laptops without knowing at least a rough idea of who was starting. And hung up the phone.”
TinderSubThrowAway@reddit
But do you have a computer for them?
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
Yes we keep at least 5 in stock at all times
PappaFrost@reddit
First late onboarding form is free. Second one is gonna cost ya. LOL.
BrainWaveCC@reddit
Same day, then?
You're in the better half of the graph, then.
Fun-Fun-9967@reddit
good man
ITguydoingITthings@reddit
Wait until you get the call wondering where the computer is for the person they hired, that's been there for several days, that they never told you about...
snottyz@reddit
Damn you get forms? I just get someone walking in to my office asking why the new person whom I've never met can't log in to their system.
Imobia@reddit
I’ve seen this many times, we have a mostly automated onboarding process BUT it’s all overnight and a lot relies on global teams / functions.
So there is no way to deliver a full complement of accounts or computer in under a day.
We have a 5 day sla, HR often hire at last minute, hell we’ve had international hires turn up on day one with zero warning.
We always seem to be able to get them done overnight. Which is great but I’ve been arguing that we should charge a business cost if we need to rush ahead of the SLA. If HR had to raise a Purchase order for a rushed hire we wouldn’t have any rushed bloody hires 😏
tlsnine@reddit
Yep. Then the team gets crap or is made to look bad because “it’s not a good first impression”.
If I could read minds, I sure as hell wouldn’t be upper/middle management in IT!!
El_Grande_XL@reddit
Its common at my work. If you get everything setup on day one is rare. Most of the time is the PC thats missing or smartcard, phone etc.
I blame the HR tool Workday. Everything is a chain and if somone lags on a assigned task on it, the person after cant do anything.
It is not possible to for my manager to order access and smartcard, PC etc before HR have checked some boxes. If that HR person is sick, or have alot other things to do? To bad. Welcome to your first few days reading documentation, instead of working on getting productive.
Have new hires that actually read the whole version of the SAD, its impressive but its so boring way to start a new job and a pretty sour way to start.
networkn@reddit
I run service at our MSP, and the absolutely thing I drill to our customers, is that their onboarding process, is the first impression they make on day one. It shows an absolute lack of care for them to not have a workspace, login and password, and access to all the things they need to do their job, at the start of their first day, even if that first week is orientation and additional training occurs.
icedcougar@reddit
Sometimes we get told after a week
Staff just happily hand over their own credentials for the new comer to join… sometimes even HR isn’t informed 🙃
Arudinne@reddit
My record is 3 days.
mcdithers@reddit
Shit. I’m lucky if I get an onboarding form the same week they started. But, the people that submit the forms aren’t assholes demanding everything right now. They know it can take up to a couple days depending on my workload, and up to a week if I have to order equipment for them.
The engineering and sales departments are good about giving me a week or two notice before someone new starts. They don’t onboard nearly as often as the manufacturing side does.
2Tech2Tech@reddit
we sometimes get them after the person has been working for two weeks already
SlimShaddyy@reddit
I automated the onboarding process .accounts and access is like ready in a minute
heloyou333@reddit
One Monday morning several years ago someone walked up to my desk 9:30AM asking if laptops and accounts had been set up for their 5 interns coming in at 10am. Obviously no one had bothered to inform IT of this.... That was a fun morning!
ryanlaghost@reddit
lol universal IT issues.
GLotsapot@reddit
Did they change roles or something? We have an annoying system that when someone changes positions in HR systems, it strips all their AD groups, and their managers have to request new access. SecOps loved the process. The rest of us think SecOps are dicks
BerkeleyFarmGirl@reddit
I still remember the day that the hiring manager literally sent the person upstairs to stand in our hallway and stare balefully at us.
nope we didn't have advance notice and it seemed to be a surprise to HR as well
log1k@reddit
As is tradition...
Seriously. Last Friday I got an email at 3:54 (our office is 8am - 4pm) inquiring about whether the following 8 emails are on the distribution lists. 4 of those emails are brand new people who haven't even been setup yet. When do they start? Monday morning....
Stonewalled9999@reddit
Why are you whining? We find out someone got hired a week after they started.
Historical_Score_842@reddit
It’s annoying but that’s the beauty of tickets: if anything is missing from their first successful day, the audit says you were not given enough notice
PrincePeasant@reddit
Just-in-time®
CeC-P@reddit
That early, huh? You must be lucky. Someone started here yesterday.
Just_Steve_IT@reddit
Lol, we get tickets to onboard people after they've been working here for a month.
stonezbones@reddit
Try a week after they started...
Weird_Presentation_5@reddit
Did you get dual monitors, a docking station and a powerful laptop for them too? We are gonna photoshop and adobe pro. Thanks
Rhoihessewoi@reddit
Wait, you guys get onboarding forms?
DiligentPhotographer@reddit
I got an offboarding form submitted to our system for someone who I come to find out has not worked here in 3 months...
Doublestack00@reddit
We get those.
The best one are when they hire the person and they start, the the failed drug test of background check comes back and they have to fire them.
TacodWheel@reddit
Makes sure you take your lunch. Watch some YouTube videos, and get a nice walk in first.
Ragepower529@reddit (OP)
I don’t do this, luckily all I need to do is create an account shell and then 95% of the work is done. Then just help with 2 methods of mfa and laptop sign in. Then intune / dynamic groups take care of the rest.
CollegeFootballGood@reddit
We had one of those one time. HR approved his first day without waiting for his background check to clear.
Super awkward
Turbulent-Pea-8826@reddit
When I was getting out of the Navy and doing my offboarding checklist they made me go to orientation because I never did it when I arrived on base 3 years previously.
223454@reddit
I've had 3 of those recently. Two were by the same manager.
AmiDeplorabilis@reddit
Since they got their priorities backwards and got that severely out of order, we're united in saying that we're glad you've got your priorities in order. Obviously, getting the account created first was unimportant, so you had time to vent, and that allowed you to focus better when the ticket arrived.
Bacch@reddit
When I started my current job 4 years ago (fully remote), my laptop hadn't arrived and didn't for three days because someone dropped the ball and never put in for it. I feel this.
eulatron@reddit
This is a common occurrence at my MSP it's hell and we aren't made aware of it 90% of the time
CrainteDeDieu@reddit
Ah I loved those 😂