Who's *that* tech at your work?
Posted by onlyroad66@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 195 comments
Ticket gets dropped in my lap today. Level 1 tech is stumped, user is stressed and has deadlines, boss asks me to pause some projects to have a look.
Issue is this: user needs to create a folder in SharePoint and then save documents to that folder from a few varying places. She's creating the folder in the OneDrive/Teams integration thing, then saving the data through the local OneDrive client. Sometimes there's 5-10 minute delay between when she creates the folder and when it syncs down to her local system. Not too bad on the face of it, but since this is something that she does a few dozen times a day, it's adding up into a really substantial time loss.
Level one spent well over an hour fiddling around with uninstalling and reinstalling stuff, syncing this and that, just generally making a mess of things. I spent a few minutes talking the process over with the user, showing her that she can directly create folders within the locally synced SharePoint directory she was already using, and how this will be far more reliable way of doing things rather than being at the whims of the thousand and one factors that cause syncs to be delayed. Toss in an analogy about a package courier to drive the point home, button up the call and ticket within fifteen minutes, happy user, deadlines saved, back to projects.
The entire incident just kinda brought to mind how I don't think everyone is super cut out for this line of work. The level one guy in question is in his forties. He's been at this company for two years, his previous one for six, and in IT for at least ten. He's not proven himself capable of much more than password resets in that time, shifts blame to others constantly for his own mistakes/failures, has a piss poor attitude towards user and coworker alike, has a vastly overinflated ego about his own level of capability, and so far as I'm able to tell still has a job really only because my boss is a genuinely charitable and nice person and probably doesn't want to cut someone with poor prospects and a family to feed loose in this market.
Still, not the first time I've had to clean up one of his messes and probably not the last. Anyone else have fun stories of similar folk they've encountered?
WokeAssMessiah@reddit
I am Spartacus!
Automatic_Mulberry@reddit
Not quite related to IT, but caused by flowchart thinking rather than real troubleshooting:
A while ago, the parking brake in my wife's car stopped working. The idiot light on the dash came on, and when you pressed the switch to activate the brake, it would not. We took it to the dealer (just out of warranty, naturally, but that's another rant), and the service tech diagnosed that the ABS unit was bad and needed to be replaced, for a few thousand dollars.
But the parking brake system has to, by regulation, be separate from the service brake system. The parking brake should be a switch, some wiring, a couple of actuators, and some sensors and stuff. The ABS unit isn't even involved. The diagnosis and proposed fix were illogical.
So we took it to an independent place. They diagnosed a bad switch on the console, and replaced it for a couple hundred bucks.
ZioTron@reddit
My then gf, had a curious problem where moving in reverse would cause a strange noise, like a tone... like the brakes were somehow touching something and making a note...
My gf brought the car to the dealer trusted by her parents 3 times. They change the tire, the brake pads, the brake blocks themselves and something else I don't rememeber...
Thousand of €...
I decided to look into it.
That car model came out with a production defect where they didn't take into consideration the resonance frequency of the brake block and it would emit that sound when in reverse. The manufacter itself released 2 simple blocks of metal to attach to one bolt of the brake blocks that would change the total weight of the blocks and therefore their resonance frequency.
2x15€: problem solved
RyeGiggs@reddit
Those in MSP's that charge hourly get the issue. How many pissed off clients that won't pay their bill because you charged them 8 hours of service to say they need to replace something. "Why didn't you do that first!" Because I couldn't guarantee a replacement would fix it until I tried all these other things, until I researched the problem. Or reverse, "We replaced like you said and its still broken!"
You can only win if you were right the first time.
da_apz@reddit
When it comes to cars, I've rarely seen sane diagnostics of any modern car electrical issues. Basically if the error code says some control unit can't be found, they'll just swap in a new one and don't even consider any of the other, a lot cheaper things that could be wrong. I swear quite often if they find the actual fault, they'll just be quiet about it and say the problem was the unit, but they also resoldered a cut wire somewhere.
Elminst@reddit
I had a previous car just straight up die at a stop sign. turn key, alternator clicks but nothing happens. My regular shop (who i trusted completely) couldn't figure it out but figured it was something electrical.
Towed it to the dealer, they dillydallied for like 3 weeks before even looking at it (meanwhile i'm bumming rides from like 4 diff coworkers to keep my job), then said yeah wiring problem somewhere, can't find it so sad.
Had it towed to a independent shop specializing in that manufacturer. They also couldn't find it but said it's probably wiring somewhere and said if i ever did get it fixed, let them know what it was. They spent 6 hrs on it and only charged me for one.
Towed again to a friend of a coworker who was a "car nut." He had it for less than a week and narrowed it to the ECM. Could get a used one for couple hundred. He told me to wait a couple more days. He found the problem. A single $5 transistor barely the size of two grains of rice. Replaced it, car runs great. I paid him like $300 and a case of beer, and he tried to refuse the money. The car ran for like 6 more years til i traded it in.
RamblingReflections@reddit
But this story highlights what makes a good IT tech. It’s the ability to think logically and problem solve, regardless of the context or field: I’m not a mechanic. But I know the basics, and from that, the service manual, and the logical thinking of “if x has no power, where should that power be coming from? I’ll check that!” I can at the very least isolate the general reason for the fault, even if I don’t know what caused it, or how to fix it. It’s the difference between “my pc isn’t working” and “My PC can’t find the domain, but I have a working LAN connection”.
Problem solving and thinking logically and analytically aren’t skills unique to IT, but they’ll sure as hell make you much better at it.
CeleryMan20@reddit
Incompetence or malice? They could have done the $100 fix, pretended they did the $2k work, and pocketed the difference.
Oujii@reddit
Malice.
Ethan-Reno@reddit
Exactly. The real issue when you came in wasn’t your problem, it was they didn’t have enough money.
Derp_turnipton@reddit
Create a file. What name do I give it? That's up to you. But I don't know what to call it!
ben_zachary@reddit
Our engineering team will spend time talking to the tech and give them things to do/try instead of just taking it.
Granted there's time sensitivity there but that's typically what we do. If it's something escalated but the tech didn't know we usually will try and do it together. Might not work in this particular case but that's our SOP on it.
Altruistic-Video4138@reddit
I'm the guy they bother when that tech is a problem.
Pisnaz@reddit
Sadly this is 90% of my SD/DS teams. They messaged me via teams to claim the internet was down at the office, from their workstation. The same folks can not comprehend a VPN or the basics of AD let alone Azure in a hybrid domain. We are getting better but I had to start "lunch and learns" basically me teaching things to the team as a whole and answering questions etc. It concerns me even more as every tech has a diploma from our local college, who I engaged with a bit ago to try and refine the training.
That said there are maybe 5 who as soon as I see the name I know it will be a disaster.
NLBlackname55NL@reddit
The company I work at (MSP) has gained 10k ish new end users and is on track to get another 25k by end of year.
We've expanded our service desk team by like 30 people, some young, some old, all tier 1 and as green as they come. I am SHOCKED with how little practical knowledge the college grads have, they cant use cmd, telnet, ps, bash, dont understand AD, DNS, TCP/IP, anything.
I'm in my late 20s, entry/low level degree, and feel like this was all standard when I joined fresh out of school at 18... Idk what colleges do anymore.
Public-Big-8722@reddit
It's only been 5 years since I graduated, but for some perspective, my coursework was mostly reading books and performing silly little exercises. It felt like it went in one ear and out the other. There were not many projects that you actually had to apply the knowledge in order to complete. I learned a ton after taking a help desk job because there were actual problems to solve. You can do all the reading you want, but until you have to apply that knowledge, it really won't stick with you.
I think it is a problem with incentives. In college, students are learning that it is more important to get the grade than it is to understand the material. I know because I was one of those students..
Remote_Advantage2888@reddit
Good post OP but your description of the tech got my blood boiling. he sounds like a typical narcissistic personality type to me and I have been traumatized for years in my work life be these people. I learned the hard way. Now, From my experience, I can tell you these type of people are horrible for front line customer support. They are like life sucking cancer for the people they work with. They actually enjoy wasting end user’s time as well as other technicians time and energy with endless distractions and gas-lighting. It comes down to this logic: They don’t need your help or knowledge because they already know it all and it’s your job somehow to serve them. They will never be thankful for your help and they will always take credit for other people’s work.
IMO, your boss needs to go to HR about this. This person needs to seek immediate mental health counseling but they will never do it from their own free will. The sooner your boss realizes it and takes action, the better the company will be for it. Not sure about I what I’m saying? I could be wrong… if you want to test this yourself, you could approach him and ask him if he has questions about the ticket you closed. His response will be telling; see if he says thank you and maybe tries to understand where he failed or if he goes on playing the blame game and playing the victim. I could go on about this. Pm me if you want to chat.
Anyway, I empathize with your situation and I hope you are able to navigate it unscathed!
ApricotPenguin@reddit
Another thing to keep in mind is user bias (in terms of trust).
Even if the initial tech explained the situation / alternate method to the user, your explanation may have been listened to instead, purely by virtue that you're more senior.
maverickaod@reddit
Another thing is to also ask what they're trying to do not just what the problem is. People approach things different ways and the user might have just "always done it that way" rather than knowing that a newer, better way existed.
nullpotato@reddit
Users: what the hell is a keyboard shortcut? How dare you suggest I cheat at my job?!
brundlfly@reddit
100% You can make them feel heard and not talked down to as well as skip a lot of guesswork troubleshooting if you ask to see how they're trying to do it. "Show me what happens when you try" will give you better info than what they tell you, but pay attention to both.
RamblingReflections@reddit
Yeah a big thing I push to my users is that it’s their job to tell me the outcome they want and it’s my job to find the appropriate solution. Come to me and tell me you need to produce xyz in the format of abc, and I will find you the right software to do it, along with the right licensing and what not for your specific dept and setup. Don’t just come at me saying “I need Software Z installed”.
It’s frustratingly common for users to jump straight to what they think will solve their issue, without actually informing me of the issue they’re trying to solve. That’s my job, my guy! Let me do it. It’s what I’m paid for, and I’m not too terrible at it either.
marli3@reddit
People think they should ask the question...then get angry because we answered the wrong question.
Oujii@reddit
Yeah, sometimes users will come with some weird ass problem, then I ask them to take a step back and explain what they are trying to do, what's their goal, what they want to achieve. It usually works better for them to explain their expectations and then you can see the problem itself.
kwnet@reddit
To take this even further: An old boss of mine told me to generally be wary of users who come to you with solutions to complex problems and don't want to consider other solutions. Many times they have an agenda they're pushing and their solution is a shortcut to it.
TheRabidDeer@reddit
I always hated this about tech, though I am sure it is similar in other industries. I'm aware of my title and this bias though so if I explain something to someone that I know is correct but the user is still not confident with my explanation or insist I am incorrect I'll pass it off to a more senior tech to copy/paste something into the ticket.
NickBurnsCompanyGuy@reddit
Very valid. This happens to people under me constantly. Often find myself repeating my tech verbatim and the user is suddenly fine with it.
Relevant_User-Name@reddit
This happens to me all the time at work. I just got pretty much a brand new team at work, my old techs are moving on to different areas and I couldn't be more proud of them. But my new peeps will explain something to a user, get off the phone. Immediately my direct line will ring and I will walk over to their desks with the headset muted and ask what did they tell the user. I'll repeat verbatim, and they're like "oh okay, thanks bud!" Granted I've been on the help desk for 15ish years and been managing it for the past 10, and during that time there has been multiple times when I've been rolling solo for months to years at a time, so people have come to see me as the face of IT since I can do it all (not always very well, but I figure it out eventually lol).
syntaxerror53@reddit
Seen that happen.
Three techs spent over half hour (each) with user explaining why issue was with the M$ software (think it may have been server issue or limitation or something) and not much we could do. User not having it and having hissy fit..
In comes Snr SysAdmin, goes over to see issue and comes back 5mins later. With User following behind blaming M$ for issue.
"What the heck did you tell'em? Been playing hell with us."
onlyroad66@reddit (OP)
This is true and absolutely something to keep in mind. There's been times where I've asked a coworker or senior to "weigh in" on an issue I know with near certainty I'm correct about simply because their title carries more weight than mine. And plenty of cases where I've had to do similarly for some of our service desk folks.
In this case though? That's not what happened. His ticket notes showed a fundamental misunderstanding about the problem, the tech involved, and any coherent troubleshooting steps (I asked why he thought reinstalling Office would make OneDrive sync faster, he didn't have an answer).
And don't get me wrong here, I would love to dissect this ticket with him and go over the solution in detail so he can better handle similar issues in future. He generally treats any offers to further his knowledge as a personal insult though, which veers towards HR complaint territory real quick though.
Wendals87@reddit
I don't understand why this is a go to. It takes 10 minutes at least to reinstall and I haven't found it to fix most problems except when it's completely broken.
My old colleagues who still do level 2 work repair office all the time as part do their troubleshooting
RamblingReflections@reddit
It gains you 10 minutes to think of what actually might be the real issue, while the user is happy that you’re doing something? Maybe? It probably won’t work, but it buys you 10 minutes of peace to figure out what actually might work.
Successful_One_1000@reddit
Fun fact about level one lads is: mostly of them barely listen to the problem, this leads to "solutions" hardly related to the issue itself.
I had to deal with a gnarling situation, C-level employee complain about the monitor, whenever she leaves desk, the monitor gets black and stop responding, the notebook is on and properly being charged by the dockstation, it recognizes the keyboard+mouse combo and, after a successful login, the mouse "dissappear" on the side monitor but nothing is exhibited on the screen, my level ONE and TWO guys "invest" 3 hours on it, changing every single thing possible, from cables, to dock and even the monitor itself, they tried different machines, reinstalled drivers and even suggested a clean windows install, but could not reproduce the error or find a solution. This goes for 4 days, the C-LEVEL can't leave desk or she is penalized with the most ridiculous solution: "restart the computer".
I'm the senior IT (infra and cyber), and I happen to pass by her and ask if everything is OK, she nods me and say "definitely not, my monitor doesn't work", I speak with her ~40 seconds while walking her to the desk, and sit, reconfigure the windows power plan and test a bit, we wait a few minutes, test again and voilà, problem solved. I spent 5 minutes of my and hers time to solve the issue, they were babling with it for days now.
This gets me thinking, what in the world is happening on their minds? They barely talked to her to understand the issue and spent days for nothing, the level one has 1 year experience with us already and the level two has 3 years, and they could not think of anything more technical than restart the computer 193747363 times a day.....for real, I can't say they are even worth the time to lecture and train anymore.
bearwithastick@reddit
Worked internal IT for 8 years. After such a long time of troubleshooting, it often made sense to just restart / swap out stuff / reinstall the OS or apply new drivers / firmware. We told users to save everything to the file server or Sharepoint, anything saved locally will be erased with no backups.
Sure there are times where discussing the issue more in dept with the users absolutely makes sense and maybe is even necessary to investigate a overarching issue. But an important skill for an IT-worker is to recognize when to invest more time and when to just simply reinstall or swap out.
uptimefordays@reddit
A lot of, especially entry level, people in this industry do not have a solid grasp of computing fundamentals. They do not know how things work so they basically cargo cult troubleshooting the same way devs cargo cult “what Google did in 2015” they understand the desired end state but not how to get there. Many techs, for instance, don’t know about power plans, fast boot, or other Windows features so “just restart” or “swap hardware” seems like a rational way of fixing “monitor turns off” they simply don’t have any idea a monitor might auto sleep after 40 seconds.
Bogus1989@reddit
i have realized i cant be around neanderthals you mention above..ive forced my gaming buddies enough to learn troubleshooting…basically so i dont have to….🤣now all of them have IT careers. we fuckin dunk on each other hard…come on “Database Engineer” I thought you worked in IT. too much fun to mock each other now
Mackswift@reddit
Because those IQ challenged techs know that you will eventually do what you just described and they'll not deal with any consequences.
I learned a ways back to stop doing that (I can't stand dealing with end users anyways). And when they cry that they can't figure it out(the tech), I shrug my shoulders at them with a bit of a Han Solo smirk and a "well, what do you know how to figure out?".
The technical capabilities as well as other attributes of the Help Desk over the past 10 years has really gone south.
Bogus1989@reddit
🤣My coworker, whos still fairly new….technically…he was a contractor long enough we were like, if we hire someone else and not him, fuck you, we arent starting over again(in the past we trained up 3 guys, only for miss communication and they were let go. They actually were so valuable, one solved all of our sccm troubles as we didnt always have the time. Our image was running hot as shit.
Anyways I didnt need to do much training for him, I quickly got him to understand he wasnt doing anything wrong, in an extremely fucked up and a trash situation….and infact he knew more knowledge about the issue than anyone else. he already was much deeper than I ever went. I was the previous person to deal with this. I pretty much told him the guy he was dealing with was a complete jackass, and they just gave him that department last week. The vendor was also fuckin awful, and he had trouble understanding pretty simple stuff. Luckily the former manager who had been retired for months…me and him spent many nights fixing this trash software. I called him and thank god. man knew exactly how to fix it. Anyways after that whole ordeal. I was just proud of him for diving in…not waiting around and sayin i dunno…
the reason I said all of that, is victor doesnt come to me and ask questions much. hes fuckin stumped if he does.
anyways…one day
he called me earlier in the day the guys on his team(hes managing our contractors for win 10 upgrades at the time….)
he wasnt there and asked me if there was any updates or reasons why i thought maybe network shares were down? i said no…works for me? he said no worries ill ttyl…
i saw him later and we bullshitted and i asked about that issue….he said oh no it was the dumbest shit I ever seen…im pissed they even called me about that…he said aight you really wanna know….they called me and told me they couldnt view network shares….dude they only tried in the search bar…never occurred to them to open file explorer and put in the address bar…
i said NUH UH….dude shut up….🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.
I said CONGRATS, your first story dealing with complete idiots wasting your time.
AgentBlue14@reddit
How did changing power plan settings resolve the issue?
I'm genuinely curious since I don't think I would've come up with that since it appears completely unrelated as you wrote.
Successful_One_1000@reddit
User complained that leaving the desk for a few minutes was enough for monitor and computer to go pitch black, moving the mouse or typing on keyboard was the deal to awake the computer but not the monitor. I figured the dockstation driver was not receiving the video imput from usb-C port only, and it had to be related to the energy default configs, which turn the video off after 3 minutes.
Later that day I connected my own machine, which has an specific power plan and nothing happened, using a machine with default energy configurations was always giving similar issues, no matter hardware or drives.
Her issue was not hardware related or software related, was behavior only, if she left the room carrying the computer along the issue wasn't triggered after coming back and reconnecting the sleeping machine, so something related to the dockstation video not being activated after the machine "auto sleeps" was going on, I just avoided a huge setback of support from c-level and solved the issue in no time for her apparently.
iixcalxii@reddit
Probably just delayed the time for the computer to hibernate/sleep.
dhardyuk@reddit
All you can do is invest your time in him.
Time is all you have - and probably not very much of it. Give freely of your time and coach him. Show him how to find out how this stuff works - and let him know you are investing in him.
Tell him that he has to meet your investment in him with at least as much effort as you do - after all, if he doesn’t think he’s worth the effort himself why should you?
If he can’t, or won’t, learn, tell him that you are sorry, but despite your best efforts you don’t think he’s really suited to the subject matter. You can emphasise that he gave up on himself, and you can’t help him if he doesn’t engage.
Then tell your manager that you gave it your best shot, but he gave up on himself before you did.
Nobody owes anybody a living, if he can’t pull his own weight he’s actually reducing your effective head count by more than 1 because someone has to fix everything he screws up.
The reality of working in IT in your 40s and not having a clue about your actual job should be terrifying - how does he expect to remain employed if he can’t do the work?
Professional-Toe502@reddit
I love this answer and thought process... This is life
signalcc@reddit
Allot of the time it comes down to HOW something is said more than what is said. The CEO of my company can’t stand me, for some reason the Helpdesk manager can say the same thing I said and he gets it. On the other hand there are 50 other people that prefer to have me explain something compared to someone else.
I feel like I can get things down to a level of user understanding without making them feel stupid. However, I do believe that with the CEO I explain in too much detail and he just doesn’t want that. He is a full blooded engineer from the paper days and that plays a big factor. Kinda hard headed. lol.
MickTheBloodyPirate@reddit
A lot.
MegaByte59@reddit
If he doesn’t take kindly to help or feedback not sure what you can do. Let him drown and take his escalations I suppose.
uptimefordays@reddit
He didn’t have an answer because he doesn’t understand fundamentals—it’s all black box troubleshooting!
RamblingReflections@reddit
I get this happening to me, but in a slightly different way. I’m a woman. Obviously, the man next to me must know more, never mind that I’m a network admin and he’s my network support office. He’s male, and for some users, that’s all that matters.
My NSO is great though. He usually refers them straight back to me, but on the times he can’t, it grinds my gears listening to him repeat, verbatim, what I literally just told the user, and the user toddling off, all happy, because he got The Man to explain The Thing to him.
eeeeekthecat@reddit
I used to work retail. This nationwide chain would receive movies and albums far in advanced of their official release date. Obviously to ensure all ducks are in a row come time.
Someone called and asked about a specific movie and if I can set it aside for her. I explained that, yes, I do have it on hand but because it's before the release date I can't sell it. The cash register won't even allow me it because it's not quite in the system yet. I can't over ride it, it's not the first Tuesday of thr month, etc
She immediately said: "I want to speak with a manager."
I say, sure thing. Call a manager over. Proceeds to explain not in the same exact verbiage but same explanation with same structure using same terms that it's not possible.
Caller briefly said, oh, that's fine I understand and call ends.
Some people don't hear you until someone more senior up explains things. Just how some people are. 🤷
archelz15@reddit
It's not always about seniority though. If someone had spent hours fiddling around with my laptop installing and uninstalling stuff, syncing this and that, and generally making a mess of things, I wouldn't really be inclined to trust they know what they are talking about even if they eventually got to explaining the alternate method to me.
I get that sometimes finding the fix takes some trial-and-error, and don't expect people to get things first time, but trust me users can tell the difference between a tech doing a systematic trial-and-error and a tech who is trying random things because they haven't got the slightest clue.
vacri@reddit
As a phone support mope for a medical device company, I once had a user refuse to read out the actual error message until I got her to read it out letter by letter. Even when I asked it word by word, she still just made it up (and it was something it couldn't possibly be at that point in the workflow). I had to get her to read out the individual letters. Three letters in, I knew which error it was.
I am happy to forgive people for being tech naive, but people who refuse to help me help them? Stuff them.
SilasDG@reddit
This 100%.
I've given techs exact words to say to clients before. Even reviewed their messages before sending them. Client is still unhappy and asks for me. I then work with the client who 2 minutes later is happy even though they're getting the same words, the same solution, etc.
The difference is the client has years of experience with me, and knows that if I'm saying it that they can trust it. Where as with the tech who is new to them, they are inherently nervous about the new persons ability and whether to trust it.
Relationships with your customers go a long way.
Cool-Calligrapher-96@reddit
Whilst I agree that I get called into VIP issues and get frustrated that basics often haven't been looked at, service desk are also under performance measures that detract from quality, intimidated by stressed senior users and sometimes not exposed to the 100s different ways users use the same technology.
AerialSnack@reddit
How true this is. I'm glad I don't work with users anymore, because I can't stand how my opinion is constantly disregarded because I look young.
LaserKittenz@reddit
Hehehe this reminds me of a support call from early in my career.. Cable TV tech support and a client was yelling all sorts of racism at my coworker because he wanted a "good" tech... I ended up getting the return call and decided to make myself seem dumb.. "Coworker ABC is really good but I've been here a bit longer so I'll give it a try.. First I want you to unplug everything from the back of your TV and cable box"
wait ten minutes for him to finish
"Ok so your done unplugging everything?"
Then I hang up and go for a smoke :D
AsianSensationMan@reddit
Sounds like my last coworker we got rid of. His name isn't Matt is it?
Benevir@reddit
"Hey Benevir, this server is down. Please fix it"
"What makes you think its down?"
"Well, I can't ping it"
"What happens when you try?"
"It doesn't work!"
"Ping gives a variety of specific error messages. Please copy/paste the error message into this chat"
""Ping request could not find host"
"What happens if you type the name of the server correctly?"
"Oh, its back up now. Thanks!"
willwork4pii@reddit
“It’s back up now”
Triggered
vppencilsharpening@reddit
I asked a tech who was at a workstation what the IP of the workstation was.
They said "127.0.0.1"
Which while technically correct, did not help.
eulynn34@reddit
>Oh, it's back up now....
/slams fist into keyboard
Mr_Kill3r@reddit
I have a graduate, now three years in on our graduate program, who still cannot figure out this kind of stuff. Be buggered if I know what they teach at university now days but it is not common sense fault finding.
I have yet to make this guy useful, even sending him back to level one service desk draws nothing but complaints.
WorldlinessUsual4528@reddit
Printer issue on ONE computer- tech uninstalled and reinstalled the print driver, then escalated it saying the printer was broken and a new one needed to be purchased...
ihaxr@reddit
Printer broken, order new one
SpectreHaza@reddit
I mean I hate printer issues, and we don’t typically manage them so probably lack of experience with them, but that’s a hell of a jump lol
WorldlinessUsual4528@reddit
Look, I'm pretty lenient about blind spots. There's plenty of things that people just end up not having experience in, especially when they worked in only 1-2 environments before. I tell my staff it's no big deal, just let me know if you end up with something like that and I'll help you through it. As long as you have the fundamentals down, we'll figure it out.
The problem with this guy was that he was one of those ones that knew everything and everyone else was stupid. Actually had the nerve to complain to my superior that he should be in a higher position and the helpdesk was beneath him. I had several other situations I could have used but all I had to do was tell my boss about the printer one and the case rested.
rinyre@reddit
Wtf. Help desk is beneath no one. Maybe I'm a weirdo with front support patience levels that I have, but I attribute it to my time spent in Geek Squad, in a small home-visit repair shop, and of all things in a chat center doing account support. Patience became a 'must' for me and I've surprised multiple groups of coworkers with it.
I'm grateful I don't have to as much anymore, but I still get occasional tickets because of an issue with an app I'm SME for, and if anything it's allowed me to be even more patient because of the lesser amount of such support I have to do overall.
I just struggle with that mentality of those folks as you said. It's stressful sure but taking time can actually reduce that stress.
WorldlinessUsual4528@reddit
He was a kid that just wanted more money and a better title, without having to work for it, because he genuinely believed he was the smartest person in any room. Unfortunately, that mindset has crept onto the scene moreso since COVID. People thinking they should go from college to $150k a year with zero experience, when they're a dime a dozen because the tech market is oversaturated.
Smtxom@reddit
Had a ticket forwarded to me from the L1 person. No troubleshooting on their part. Ticket just said “I think the switch needs to be rebooted. I can’t print” from the user. I asked the level 1 person what troubleshooting they did…”none. We don’t touch the network stuff”. Hard facepalm
iixcalxii@reddit
I know a tech that had a client buy a new printer and later realize it was a ip conflict making the bad printer break lol.
WorldlinessUsual4528@reddit
Jfc, yeah that's how this guy was
patthew@reddit
“Printing is down”
Krigen89@reddit
🤣🤣🤣 God
SkyrakerBeyond@reddit
Oof.
willwork4pii@reddit
I’ve got level 1 guys who have been doing this for decades that get fucked up installing a printer by IP and not using OEM wizards.
dts-five@reddit
We have different definitions of fun. It stopped being fun to deal with my guy many moons ago. It's demoralizing, and if management doesn't deal with bad apples, you start losing good people.
East-Background-9850@reddit
I've written about this shitty tech before that I used to work with. He's probably a decade younger than me, he'd worked in this school for 8 years and that was the only IT job he'd ever had. Surface level knowledge and really poorly developed skills. He was probably at the same level as an L1 who had been working for 6 to 12 months.
He was nice and friendly and he claimed he wanted to learn but he was really defensive so if you gave him constructive criticism he wouldn't take it well. He also made some really baffling decisions.
- Took him 2 hours to get the serial numbers for around a dozen laptops that needed the keyboards replaced for a known fault. He had to do it manually as we didn't have an up to date asset management system but his way of doing it was to turn on on each one, log in, ran a powershell command to get it, then handwrote it into his notebook. The serial number was on the bottom of the laptop. The best part is when he emailed the vendor asking them what he should do with the serial numbers. I've never seen someone turn a simple task into something this complicated.
- Stuffed around for a day with an admin staff member's PC and couldn't diagnose a hard drive fault. The office manager was so pissed off with him as the staff member worked part time and had deadlines to meet.
- Couldn't diagnose a dead network switch in a hub and spoke topology.
Jarlic_Perimeter@reddit
LOL, that handwriting thing cracked me up, I had a guy that I swear must have been abused by ctrl-c when he was a child.
East-Background-9850@reddit
This happened 4 years ago and to this day that whole thing still confounds me. Do you know why he logged in and ran a Powershell command? Because he thought that the serial number on the back of the laptop was different to what that would output. Was it? Sure. The one on the laptop had a hyphen in it whereas the one returned by Powershell didn't and Lenovo seemed to use both interchangeably and he couldn't tell that they were otherwise the same.
It took him 2 hours to do this because he probably signed into every single laptop with his own account and since these are shared laptops, it's unlikely he had ever signed into it before so it would have to create his user profile and process all of those GPO's.
And after going to all of that effort why would you choose to handwrite it? After handwriting it why on earth would you have to email the vendor asking them what they want you to do with the serial numbers?! What do you think they're going to say? Send us the handwritten serial numbers by post?
I can't believe I'm writing paragraphs about retrieving laptop serial numbers but we can thank this ex-colleague for it.
Humble-Plankton2217@reddit
I worked with a completely inept tech for too many years. After he got fired, I had to go through his files to find any documentation he may have created (there was none, not surprising).
During this doc search, I found a copy of his resume and read it. I cannot believe they hired him. There was not a single thing on his resume that would have been useful for any job that has ever existed in IT.
It all made sense, all those years of cleaning up his ignorant messes, the suspicions that I had that he didn't know anything completely confirmed.
I thought maybe it was weaponized incompetence. It wasn't, it was just incompetence.
He used my name as a reference. I don't think I'm legally allowed to warn anyone about him, but I definitely make sure they know I have nothing positive to say about his skill set.
StoneyCalzoney@reddit
Out of curiosity, what ended up being the guy's downfall? I suspect a similar thing might be happening at my org, the sr sysadmin has been getting more negative attention lately for not taking care of issues which require his time and access, and he does not want to delegate access to the next best person that is available to fix the issue (me).
I don't want to stay and clean up any mess this guy might make if he gets fired, he's so intertwined with our infrastructure that I could see him planting bombs and backdoors before handing the keys.
Humble-Plankton2217@reddit
I wish I could tell you that management finally realized, after 4+ years, that the guy was no good and fired him for that reason. That's not what happened, though.
There was a voluntary LOA and after a certain period of time HR was not required to hold his seat. He did wind up being on LOA too long, and HR opted not to extend the hold.
He essentially self-termed, but I think he thought they would hold his seat for as long as he wanted them to.
I did make some maneuvers that would make that choice easier for management (e.g. requested a temp for backfill, then praised the temp's good work to the moon to management), but I don't know if my efforts had any real effect on their decision.
sir_mrej@reddit
As someone else said - You can just confirm that he was an employee. You don't have to do anything else. Heck you can point them to HR's number.
HerfDog58@reddit
"I can confirm he worked here between Date X and Date UY, and according to our HR records, is not eligible for rehire."
SM_DEV@reddit
One can always say something positive on its face, yet converts contempt for his IT skills, if any…
For example, one might say, “I have no doubt he was a fantastic barista… or Walmart greeter”
Humble-Plankton2217@reddit
Lol, yes.
BlackFlames01@reddit
I'm that tech at work. Because, it's only me, lol.
SifferBTW@reddit
Your techs spend an hour troubleshooting? Must be nice
My techs:
User submits ticket at 9:00am - "I can't get to the internet"
Assigned tech reassigns to me at 9:05am with no notes.
Temporary-Prune-9999@reddit
You showed the user did you show the level 1 tech or are you assuming they know and have the same knowledge of SharePoint like you do?
GremlinNZ@reddit
Had them before, not currently.
Probably got offside when they hit delete on a user in Exchange and complained it deleted the user object. Uh... Been like that for a couple of decades...
Silence... Really shouldn't let my thoughts exit my mouth without checking them first...
Krigen89@reddit
Been there, done that. If you weren't there decades ago and no one told you... Then no one told you.
SinTheRellah@reddit
Also found out the hard way that exchange removes the AD user. Not sure that should disqualify anyone since it’s not obvious in any way.
Barnox@reddit
Same here. With how the setup was here when I joined, you needed to manually create the mailbox. So clearly they're slightly separate and deleting the mailbox is fine... right?
One of those mistakes you only make once.
SinTheRellah@reddit
Exactly.
CosmologicalBystanda@reddit
Depends, if you create the mailbox first and realise it also automatically creates the AD user it should be a pretty easy thing to correlate.
SinTheRellah@reddit
True.
Zamboni4201@reddit
That guy “in his 40’s” can be 100% solved with good coaching.
Charitable nature from the manager means this behavior will continue.
A solid manager will see room for improvement, and in a 1-on-1, encourage the individual to improve relationships/attitude.
Technical ability can be improved also, and it might involve documentation.
wotwotblood@reddit
I have a colleague who is more senior than me but always deflect from taking a complex ticket. When probed further, confessed that not equipped with technical knowledge. Well good luck to the senior as I just resigned and no one will cover for him anymore.
Kal_451@reddit
I get your point OP but at the same time, I need those first line bods too cos those guys, who usually just want to do their 9-5 and call it a day, are the ones that free my time to do their interesting stuff. You know that I mean?
HEONTHETOILET@reddit
Sounds like a training issue.
ZAFJB@reddit
Check your ageism
6SpeedBlues@reddit
To me, this is a prime example of the XY problem. What the user SAYS they need done is what THEY have decided the solution to their problem is instead of telling you the details of the original problem. Stepping back to understand the core issue is always the best path and something very few people even try to do.
hobo122@reddit
I’ve got one person on my team who doesn’t know anything. It’s me.
dahliasinfelle@reddit
I'm the opposite. I have one guy on the team who actually gets things done. Me :(
Honest-Still8978@reddit
My boss. It's just him and I. User said they weren't getting a network connection. Boss connected them to wifi. I later found the ethernet cable unplugged laying right next to their dock. Plugged it in...
MeatSuzuki@reddit
Current level 1 tech is exactly like this. Overthinks things constantly but no lateral thinking. It's like he immediately "knows" how to fix an issue and just sticks with it to oblivion even though it can be solved immediately by approaching it differently. He also wants to script literally everything, even one off tasks.
GuardiaNIsBae@reddit
Spends 16 hours trying to make their own script for something that takes 7 seconds to do from a domain controller, only to find that the script does not work properly after they’ve already used it to “fix” issues for the past 2 months? I’ve worked with a couple of those guys now and it never gets easier lol
divad1196@reddit
It's level 1 for a reason. Cheap but not experts. It annoys the users but that's a Corporate decision. The job is annoying, you are in the frontline with some dispectable users, ... some of these people have no formation at all in the field, that's just a way to make a bit of a living.
Spitting on them like that is pointless and just disrespectful. There will always be someone better than you.
Also, you provided a workaround, great. Who will investigate the issue then? It can be symptomatic of something else, you might have other users poping with the same issue. If you directly provide a workaround, the user is less likely to help you troubleshoot. In my previous job, some devs would blindly reboot a service/VM and call it a day.
IMO, you did good by providing a workaround, but if you didn't try to confirm if something was wrong, then you ain't better than this guy.
archelz15@reddit
Ouch, is this situation that widespread? You could well be describing the situation in the IT department where I work - the only reason I haven't immediately thought that is because you've used the pronoun "he", whereas the person I'm referring to is a "she", and that she's generally nice to people until and unless she decides she doesn't want to and only then does the piss poor attitude kick in. To the extent that she will refuse to go and provide support to people who fall into that category of "I don't like you".
coeffey@reddit
That syncing to Sharepoint always causes drama at my company. Better to use add shortcut to onedrive. Still not perfect. But I get a lot less nagging that their files are not synced.
Spiritual_Grand_9604@reddit
This for sure, especially when upgrading or replacing devices and you dont need to note and manually resync every library or folder
asdofindia@reddit
My partner had gone to an office she consults at a couple of months ago. She wanted to connect her windows computer to a wireless printer. The "tech" guy first tried downloading the printer software. The software wasn't getting downloaded (which was actually because there was no space in the drive where it was being downloaded to, as I discovered afterwards). Guy thinks the drive is encrypted and that's the issue. So he downloads bitlocker. And then he encrypts the drive. Halfway through he cancels this and starts decrypting. And eventually he gives up and uninstalls bitlocker.
My partner returned home with the drive being locked. She could luckily find decryption keys in Microsoft account and could use that to unlock. I also discovered that since the drive was near full, turning encryption on/off was both failing.
All this to print a document.
DisjointedHuntsville@reddit
OneDrive is crapware when you compare it to Google Drive or iCloud.
What the fuck do you mean sync takes 10 minutes? The amount of money Microsoft makes on their ecosystem of dog shit and they can’t make things that fit the tech bar of the past 25 years?
Got2Bfree@reddit
So do you recommend "SharePoint Sync" instead of "Add shortcut to OneDrive".
All Online guides recommend using "add shortcut to OneDrive".
Creating folders locally, is only solving her problem, right?
If others need to view the folder, then they need to wait the 10 minutes until it's synched.
I hate SharePoint for this exact reason, it just feels slow compared to a NAS, especially if you have a lot of small binary files.
Am I missing something?
tectail@reddit
I have noticed that some IT techs grab onto the problem and try to solve it. This in theory seems like a good idea, but that leads to constantly beating your head into a wall trying to make the way the user is doing it better. A lot of the times, the solution is that the user is doing it inefficiently and that there is another better way to do this.
This is a really hard concept for some techs to grasp unfortunately, and does take ingenuity instead of just brute force. Not everyone has that, and I would say those people are fine level 1 techs, but that is where they will be limited. the managers jobs is to use the tools that they have the best that they can. This person may be great at beat your head against a wall task like staging computers, and documenting network cabling, but may not be a good diagnostic troubleshooter.
Normal_Trust3562@reddit
Yes, our 1st line is the same. Someone wanted to change the name of a shared mailbox so the tech set up a new mailbox then a forward. Didn’t bother to read the process or ask anyone, then when I said we should just change the name and add the previous address as an alias he rolled his eyes and argued his way was better.
Honestly, I’m happy to show people how things work, answer questions, it really doesn’t bother me. But this guy constantly argues, always thinks his way is right, goes off and does it his way and the line manager is too spineless to say anything.
Ducaju@reddit
sorry to say but in many places first line support doesn't even require computer knowledge. they describe a problem, they look for keywords that are in the problem description and then execute whatever they find in the KB hoping this will fix the problem. This is why he spend an hour fiddling. looking at the bigger picture, first line will solve plenty of little things and they are paid a lot less than second/third line. so they do get the freedom to fiddle around and waste time
PinotGroucho@reddit
I am intimately aware of the existence of many of these type of people and although when I was younger really was bothered by the counter productive mess they left behind I no longer view this as their problem.
It is a management problem.
Although I sympathise with your interpretation of the boss' reasons for keeping him around and even support those, it might not be the only reason
It might be that this person has important non technical skills that have value to the organisation and the team he is a part of.
It is the responsibility of the boss to assign him those tasks that he is most effective at and specifically remove his 'responsibilities' where they are hindering the most talented members of the team.
This will improve both team morale and effectiveness.
Have you ever discussed this with the higher ups in a way that doesn't damage your colleague? "
fuknthrowaway1@reddit
I used to have Bill. He was fine when he was in his depth, like resetting passwords, making cables, or programming phones.
Bill could just never tell when he was out of it.
Once sent him out to change a toner cartridge and an hour later Bill returned with a PC on a cart.
Uh.. What?
Bill then launches into a story about why he's brought a users PC back with him. See, there was an 'Outlook issue' and the network was laggy, so he went to take a look and the thing just up and died on him and he couldn't figure out why.
Okay. Put in a ticket, and, since I'm going down to grab you a loaner for the user, gimme the used toner cartridge and I'll toss it in storage.
He hadn't changed the toner cartridge.
When I took the PC apart to diag it I found two missing case screws and scorch marks on the video card from 'someone' shorting it, probably with an errant flashlight or screwdriver. After transferring the hard drive to another machine I discovered 'someone' had also deleted all the network drivers and enabled a local account.
Found the Outlook issue too. User had a 40gb .pst file.
No_Title9834@reddit
Not reading all that lil pup
Frequent_Fly4853@reddit
I think the issue is actually that SharePoint and OneDrive suck. , Microsoft sucks and the line between most of its products are now so blurry, that I don't blame the level 1 tech.
gameboy00@reddit
yeah the age old paradox, 3 trillion market cap company and their apps seem duct taped together
bbqwatermelon@reddit
The deck is kind of stacked against help desk, indeed. Some folks lack ambition to get out of help desk or dont want responsibility. I would take slacker help desk, because they can be molded, over senior techs and admins that think they know everything but do just enough work to keep their jobs and do not waste an opportunity to make others look bad any day. OneDrive sync is fine for personal site collections but is an absolute nightmare for sharepoint document libraries. Microsoft provides terrible support for it because they know its garbage and wont bite the bullet and either buy out a company that does syncing right to integrate or force everyone onto OneDrive shortcuts.
JohnGarrettsMustache@reddit
Not IT but ISP. My current coworker is a challenge. We recently had a ticket for a managed customer 4hrs away. I was busy so my coworker said he would "take a look".
For this particular connection we have a distribution router in our town followed by around 350km of fibre / transport hardware to the customer's community where it connects to a media converter, local fibre to the premises, another media converter and then Ethernet to the router.
The ticket said "seeing remote media converter down. WAN port on router down. Check media converter."
He instead bugged our top level transport tech to have the transport checked, despite the ticket saying that it's an obvious hardware issue at the customer end.
It takes about 2 minutes to log into the media converters and see that the media converter port facing the distribution router is UP but apparently that was too much work.
Such_Knee_8804@reddit
We had a guy whose rep was so bad he is still only referred to as "he who shall not be named"
Guy left a trail of messes ten miles wide
He jumped before he got fired and was immediately dead center on a massive security incident with his new employer - bullet dodged!
Exzellius2@reddit
Had one guy in our team. Gets in on on-call after 6 months of training in regards to ESXi and our infra with it.
First ticket he gets: ESXi down due to bad memory. Easy right? Make sure all VMs restarted on another host. Call on-call people from teams that own those VMs to let them check if everything is fine.
ALL of this process is documented very clearly btw.
Guy gets the call. Can‘t connect to the ESXi (duh it crashed) and closes the ticket with „ESXi not reachable“ and goes back to sleep.
That was his last on call with us and he shifted teams very quickly after into something „less stressfull“.
WillFukForHalfLife3@reddit
I have a "tech" like this. But they're the boots in the ground for a client we manage. I have essentially taken over as Jr. Sys-admin for them and manage their AD structure, print server (which is complicated with them being a logistics company), and higher level break fix tickets that require a certain level of finesse. Anyway, about a year into managing them, enter a new Technology Director who is less apt to get in our way...at first. Fast forward 4 months later. Director at their organization hires a "imaging specialist". Now since he's been there, I haven't seen a single thing that makes me think he's ever done a massive deployment with more than a single flash drive. Networking is entirely beyond him in the sense that "if I can ping it that means its working". Or my recent favorite, where he thought I changed his password because he couldn't use his credentials on a workstation thats domain connection had broken due to an in place upgrade to Windows 11(remember IMAGING specialist) breaking virtually every service used to communicate with their domain controllers. The short and sweet of it is "my credentials aren't working it says access denied". This is because he received "The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain has failed". The man Is also in his late to mid forties, and is, in my guess, largely there because of nepotism. It goes beyond this with him not understanding how their print service licensing works with Bartender and installing and then printing from multiple instances for the same printer consuming 5 licenses with one device. These take 7 days since the last use to roll off. Only recently, after my 50th plus time explaining why you can't do this had I lost my cool and was maybe a little too direct with him. However the case I remained professional. But boy do I hear your story and say my friend you are NOT alone. Good on you for being nice but you are right. Some folks aren't cut out for this job.
drslovak@reddit
Spoiler alert, OP is actually that tech in his story
redmage07734@reddit
You sure you don't work at my company? We have multiple level 2-3 techs like that I want to strangle:). I usually give people the benefit of the doubt for the most part too. My first thought was to get the user to use a smb share since SharePoint can break in weird ways
CLE-Mosh@reddit
This came up in my FB memories today:
"Apparently I am a big bully for asking someone to return a favor at work... No problem buddy, the next time you're stumped (which is always), no lifeline for you.... Next time, instead of helping you & training you at the things you were already supposed to know, maybe I'll just mention your sheer incompetence in passing... OOPS, my bad, I already did..."
FenrirWolfwood@reddit
I have a funny story on the other side of the spectrum...
I'm around 40 too and I've received 0 formation on O365 (unlike some of the users) and IT department doesn't have deployed it yet because management does not approve the budget.
But some departments have bought licenses by itself and I still have to give support on it when the user doesn't know how to do something they revived a course for or whenever something doesn't integrate right with our old Office 2016 shit and Exchange server.
We, tech support guys, learn how things work just by astral infusion I guess.
Ed_the_time_traveler@reddit
UnexpectedAnomaly@reddit
A lot of newer tech have no foundation for how things work because they don't value that knowledge. They expect to just be able to Google the answer and not have to think or troubleshoot about how everything plays into one another. I just discovered one of my senior network techs has no idea what device drivers are. We were reinstalling an ancient printer on the network server so I gave him a disc with the INF and system files and he didn't know what to do with it.
He just said well isn't Windows update going to install that? Everyone nowadays just wants to check boxes on a web page for as much money as possible they don't even care how the computer works. I haven't even really meant any coworkers who are excited about tech or have a childlike curiosity about things in a very long time. It's kind of weird because when I got into tech everyone was like that and I'm like that, I work best with people like that.
That's why when I talk to perspective techs I always ask them about any sort of home lab or hobbies that involve tech. I don't even care how complex it is even if it's utterly minor if they're interested in tech at all you know they'll care about knowing how things work, and knowing how things work is key to troubleshooting.
stressedinsocal@reddit
Fortunately they've left to greener pastures but my old tech had some moments that made me just have to walk away before I said something I would regret. I worked mostly at a separate site l, so I didn't interact directly with him much but would pop in every couple of weeks to see how he was getting along.
1.) Vendor mixed up a couple of servers for two different sites, not a big deal the only difference was the amount of ram. We haven't pushed them into production yet, and we didn't need to rush it so we just needed to pop out the extra ram, and get it to the other site. Tech finds the server in the rack and shoots me and my coworker a message, "can I just pull the ram without halting the server?". I couldn't help but just stare at this like he had just sent me something in Greek. I see my coworker also read the message, and neither of us respond for a couple of minutes, before I tell him that I would just halt it remotely then he can pull the extra ram. I get a message from my coworker that just says "wtf?".
2.) we managed to get some new ladder racks for the top of our cabinets, I spend a couple of days cutting them to size and installing them. Tell my tech to make sure to use the new ladder racks. He does enough installs to fill five or so cabinets, I had a lot of life stuff going on and had to take some leave. Come in one day to handle an issue that apparently only I could handle, and I noticed my new ladder racks were empty but the cabinets were full. Once I resolve the issue, I look on top of the cabinets to see the mess of spaghetti I specifically installed the ladder racks to avoid. Walked away from that and ended up recabling the five cabs later.
3.) Tech does some research on a way to solve a minor issue we were having every once in a while. He finds a solution, but doesn't know how to implement it. That's fine, that's why they pay me the medium bucks, so I create a script, test it out, and hey it works. I put it on a USB drive and give it to him. A couple of weeks later the issue comes up again and he pings me, asking how to fix it. I tell him to just connect the USB and run the script. He responds he had either lost or reformatted the USB I gave him. I resend him the script, and go to lunch to rethink my life choices.
4.) I get a message from my boss about a cross connect charge that was ordered while I was out dealing with the previously mentioned life events. He had left by this point, so I was left to sort this out. Check my network map, last edit was done by me before I had to take some leave, so that's no help. Message our account manager to ask about it, and while I wait I walk the cabinets to see if I can just find it. Then I spot it, a switch not in inventory or not on the map, three connections on a 24 port switch, two going to servers, and a cross connect. I trace the cross connect back to a switch that we had an existing and documented cross connect to, that cross connect went to a half empty switch two cabinets from this new random switch . Messaged back my account manager asking to terminate the redundant cross connect. Then I messaged my wife to convince me I could not leave work to commit assault.
I have a couple of new techs now, their first day I told them "if you mess something up, tell me and we can fix it no problem. If you mess. something up and I find it later, we will have a problem." So far they're doing great, a couple of mistakes but nothing we can't fix.
unkleknown@reddit
Shoot, I have fought this so much. I've spent hours writing step by step instructions resorting to pictures, arrows, boxes, and guess what?
The lower levels don't even look. They just "wing it" and break shit further. Don't get it, its as if they really don't give a f. I'm so fed up with escalation tickets because they broke shit and management doesn't hold their feet to the fire. Instead, I'm expected to shoulder the load.
I'm pretty much ready to look for a new job. They can go f themselves. Except any new job will be the same story
Gonna get a box of crayons for every tech and let them sit in the Fing corner, chewing on them whilst I do all their work.
deltashmelta@reddit
General suggestion.
SharePoint sync is unreliable to OneDrive and fills up endpoints. Recommended switching to shortcuts and turning off the sync option at the tenant level
(Note: Tenant sync block only blocks future syncs being an option, as prior setup ones will still use sync -- they'll need a hand migrating between sharso they unhitch sync without deleting the data locally and it syncing upwards and deleting SharePoint data.)
https://sympmarc.com/2024/07/15/im-switching-from-sync-to-add-shortcut-to-onedrive-and-why/
pr0ph3t1k@reddit
Absolutely a customer service issue. The longer I’m in this career I learn most of it is that. Im not the most technical guy but god damn can I relate and talk to people. A lot of people don’t get that.
Plastic-Necessary680@reddit
All I’m gonna say is that Perry Pro tech in Ohio can go suck a fat one
Simplemindedflyaways@reddit
Amen to that, also they need better passwords for their printers.
TheDeliSauce@reddit
Dang. I work with them but haven't really had any issues with them (I tend to find a way to fix about any issue myself, so long as there's no hardware issue involved).
bjisgooder@reddit
I don't have "that tech" at my workz just wanted to share that I just dealt with a user with the same basic sharedrive issue just now and after looking at it said, "Hey! I know this one! I just saw it on Reddit!"
So yeah, saved me the trouble of having to dive deeper as I had just read this and told the user to just save the file on their desktop being emailing it. They were trying to save to sharedrive and then share the unsynced file (a plane ticket) rather than actually sending the file.
So anyway, thanks!
PlaneTry4277@reddit
There are two types of it people. Those that try to solve the problem the end user is having and those that tell the end user they're the problem and this how to do it correctly.
LastTechStanding@reddit
Honest question to you. Did you reverse shadow the guy and mentor him on what he doesn’t know? I agree that it’s an easy fix, and they should have been able to fix at T1 level, but in this industry it is literally impossible to know everything and keep up with everything. I’ve learned that if I take the time to mentor, ask them why they did this that or the other thing I also learn from that experience; and the team is better off as a whole
onlyroad66@reddit (OP)
Honestly I kinda struggle to think of circumstances that would be better for learning in today's environment. This is at an MSP, but one of those rare unicorns that's mature enough to have (mostly) proper practices and yet small enough to avoid the siloing and hierarchies of bigger operations. No sales goals, minimal KPIs, the owner is also the seniormost tech. There are company programs for education reimbursement, and an average help desk tech can expect between 4-6 hours of active work a day depending on staffing and season, with the remainder being dedicated to whatever they happen to want to pursue. There is a culture of cooperation, of asking questions, and of upskilling workers of all levels. It's not uncommon for seniors to pull an L1 from the call rotation for an extra pair of hands on higher level project work, purely to get the tech familiar with how things operate at a strategic level. Within two weeks of being hired I was already going on field trips to network closets, for instance.
I started this job four years ago with an associates and no idea of the first thing to do in IT. By year two I was doing L2 and desktop support. Now I'm the primary technical resource for multiple clients and focused mostly on projects and development work. Not experienced or senior save by the barest qualification but I have been given opportunities and environments to put myself somewhere I'm genuinely happy at.
The community college grad we hired nine months is already shaping up to be a pretty solid L2 by the time she hits her year mark. The early thirties guy out of the navy we hired a year and a half ago is doing field support and handling day to day management on a few of our clients. The former line cook hired two and a half years ago is a better security analyst than most of the chaff the diploma mills pump out.
This guy isn't lacking for opportunities, he's just got a chip on his shoulder and doesn't respect or appreciate the resources he's been given, including by well meaning people who would rather not watch himself passive aggressive himself out of work.
LastTechStanding@reddit
That’s fair. Sounds like everyone there has an equal opportunity to skill up. The guy with the chip, you’re right. Sounds like he either doesn’t enjoy what he does, or could feel passed over for something. It sounds like he may just not enjoy the line of work any longer
whatdoido8383@reddit
As a SharePoint Admin I always cringe at the users that Sync SharePoint content locally. It's not if, its when, that lady is going to have a sync issue and make a mess of things.
But yes, our L1's make a mess of SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. Most of the problem is them not understanding the tech and not taking the time to learn it. They're worse than the end users sometimes because the break things more....
Competitive_Guava_33@reddit
Yeah as soon as I read in the OP about syncing shareooint locally I barfed a bit
Cloudraa@reddit
i had a user put a 900 gig folder into sharepoint the other day.. that was fun
Zander9909@reddit
At my workplace we have a similar person. He takes no time to actually try to solve an issue without pushing it onto someone else (usually me) and he's a good 30 years older than me. The most egregious one was I had to show him how to go to a site with a self-signed SSL certificate, just the ignore warnings and go anyway thing. The guys a moron
stephendt@reddit
What is his job title? "User"?
Krigen89@reddit
I mean, do we really want THAT guy to be clicking "ignore" on warnings though?
Zander9909@reddit
I don't disagree, but this was to access an internally hosted wiki that we were deliberately showing him how to access
scarbossa17@reddit
Wait…i have that same coworker. Are you me?? O.o
ambscout@reddit
This morning a tech was trying to help someone on a Mac log into RDS and got a cert error and asked me about it...
CosmologicalBystanda@reddit
If they're new it's fine I reckon, the first time.
Delta31_Heavy@reddit
I’m a 30 year Engineer. How do you I just didn’t want to do it…just kidding. I didn’t have my glasses and could see
Humble-Plankton2217@reddit
eesh
GercMustachio@reddit
He's me. And so is she. I am all of them.
Smoking-Posing@reddit
Wait, so your solution to her sync issues was for her to use the client app exclusively?
I'm not even sure how that's different from what she was already doing
Shes gonna have issues. OD client app can suck for SharePoint....really, SharePoint kinda sucks for what most companies want to/tend to use it for
UptimeNull@reddit
Teach em how to create a folder in libraries under the correct site. Or just take over that part like the rest of us since they never can grasp the idea of patent and child structure to save their lives.
SarahNerd@reddit
Only tangentially related, but I had a customer that insisted their organization use OneDrive for SharePoint, using much of Sharepoint as a file server in spite of already having a file server they used for other documents. The boss wanted everyone to have everything they needed synced plus a VPN to access the file server...
So, so, so many times did I try to show better methods. I didn't get support from my higher ups. It was an MSP and they were the owners, so I guess they were happy to drag it out. Of course, these same bosses would get mad I was tied up by it.
I'm so glad I'm out of that mess.
Purplehashes@reddit
I had a coworker similar to that except want to be spoonfed always, doesn't bother to investigate, doesn't admit to his mistakes. Unable to comprehend different processes and scenario. I was very patient but still not pulling own weight and not taking down any notes. I'd avoid working with this and just give provisioning tickets. Less hassle, less headache, less arguments
IamABoiler@reddit
If I’m the only one in the department does that mean it’s me?
uptimefordays@reddit
On one hand, helpdesk is an entry level job so I understand folks not understanding how cloud services work—especially since so many people come to the field from “interested in computers.” On the other, a mid 40s help desk tech is pretty concerning if they aren’t new to the industry—how does one work an entry level job for almost 20 years? Most careers, this one included, are progressive you work help desk 1-2 years, move into an infrastructure role for a few more years, then engineering or management around 8-10 years in where you can cruise.
SMEXYxTACOS@reddit
That’s pretty impressive. The lvl 1 tech actually did something beyond contacting you.
1stUserEver@reddit
I see this every day with our helpdesk. They dont all have the troubleshoot mindset and need help. The fact that he gave it 1 hour is something. our guys go 15min and hands go straight up. we have a tier 1.5 / 2 for escalating now which is nice. still a bunch of fallout cleanup goes on and I get pulled in. OneDrive/Sharepoint is usually the culprit. No one understands how it really works. Thank god for backups.
RegisHighwind@reddit
My question is, if you're cleaning up after him, are you making sure that he was made aware of the problem to prevent this kind of thing in the future? Half the time that I've been told about "those" techs, it's because no one ever took the time to correct them.
RyeGiggs@reddit
I find this is only true with older T1 techs and "This is my first IT job" technicians. They either learn to identify the X-Y problem or not. I've had to term almost all the older T1's off my team, they just can't do anything other than what is exactly asked of them.
IT is not an exact industry, its problem solving, not button pushing. You're being paid to figure out what to do then do it, not wait for someone else to tell you what to do then do it.
Although, after interviewing many candidates I feel larger firms with extensive change management processes really have turned many roles into button pushing. Quite a few people interviewed have not had to use their brain at all, they just follow what the change order says to do and are almost militant in carrying out the order exactly. Anything that might involve thought is kept under and Architect role.
stempoweredu@reddit
Also, recognizing that sometimes, problems aren't technical problems. Sometimes they're procedural, training, personnel, policy. Trying to bandaid technical solutions onto personnel problems will go south fast.
In this case, OP realized that it was a process and training issue ultimately. Yes, there's a technical component, but it's far beyond anyone's hands (Microsoft's, at that level of synchronization integration)
coak3333@reddit
Being one of those older T2/T3 techs, I disagree. I agree with OP that some people are just not cut out for the role. I find it's mostly people who have only dealt with WinTel, if you have dealt with other systems architecture the logic circuits in the brain work better.
We had a guy (was a SME with Macs apparently) who we knew if got a ticket and the issue with a machine took a little thinking about would just rebuild it. He had the highest rebuild rate in a room of 12 T2 techs. And management let him mentor new starters!!
To me, those are the tickets that make the job enjoyable.
sir_mrej@reddit
Meh these days SO much is in the cloud that it's usually quicker to just rebuild than to try and chase down a ghost for hours at a time.
Back in the old days having to reinstall drivers and specific software and other things? Nah. But these days? I don't troubleshoot much for long.
patthew@reddit
Oh man I don’t think we even track a rebuild rate. Would be disturbing to see
RyeGiggs@reddit
Yeah I shouldn't say only. That's just personal experience in the last 2 years or so. I also had a young person who aced all their IT related courses, top of class student. They were, by far, the worst new hire I have ever had to attempt to train. I really felt bad for them. They had all this knowledge but didn't really "know" it. They were a professional student who could figure out what a professor wanted to see and do that. Think of the students that are in the professors office at every chance they could. 0 ability to problem solve. It was like someone who could memorize math formulas but if something didn't fit into the formula it was simply impossible. Just the thought of having to "figure out" what to do caused them extreme anxiety. "But I'm just new! How should I be trusted to figure it out??"
coak3333@reddit
Before I found a job with the love of my work life, the AS400 (wish I'd stayed with them) I worked backoffice in foreign exchange. Had a new starter who had just graduated with a degree in International Retail Management. I had to spend 30 mins trying to explain to him how the traders were making money from the millions of pounds a day of swaps flowing across our desks.
International Retail Management, and couldn't figure out how foreign exchange worked.
I've always found the best people in tech think logically, but can think laterally. And who are really good at googling.
RyeGiggs@reddit
AS400 is legendary. Still runs in some manufacturing firms. Good old JD Edward’s.
BoatKevin@reddit
I feel like it can vary. My last job had a T1 who had spent 15 years as a field service engineer. He got tired of being a one man show and spending hours driving. He was in his 60’s and decided his last working years would be better enjoyed working a chill job. He was also very friendly and genuinely enjoyed talking to all the callers.
My current job has a T2 who I honestly have no idea how he ended up in his position. He’s been with the company for 40 years and doesn’t seem able to manage his own mic mute during meetings. He routinely has the lowest ticket closure rates and can’t even fumble his way through very clear documentation
Mackswift@reddit
This irritates me to no end.
For starters, you're an admin, an engineer, and an architect. With years of experience and education and certs to go along with it. And (yet again) the IQ-challenged level one tech can't figure out even basics 101, and you keep getting asked to go backwards 20-30 years and handle end user level 1 crap. That's disrespectful to you, your skills, and abilities.
And no, it's not your responsibility to sit down and teach this individual. You have a career to think about and continually stepping backwards at your level will be just that, stepping backwards when you need to be moving forward continually. You're not getting any younger. You keep stopping and stepping backwards because of these noodle brains, you're gonna realize (too late) how much doing that has set you back. Especially when the tech in question has been doing this for 10 years? If there's no affinity at that point, he needs to be shown the door. And this crap where older folks start treating the Help Desk like it's a Walmart Greeter of IT has got to stop.
Don't get me wrong, if this was someone in their low 20s, I'd give them just enough an answer and a white paper or book and let them roll their sleeves up to figure it out. That's how you learn. But I will not hold your hand nor will I keep stopping my path forward because you can't figure it out.
The job of coaching these guys falls on their managers and directors and NOT the admins, engineers, etc.
General_Ad_4729@reddit
90% of helpdesk persons think they should hold a better position but have the work ethic and drive that wouldn't cut it at a fast food restaurant. Those techs, I kick tickets back to asking for more information and what troubleshooting steps where done. The other 10%, I took under my wing and would reach out to them if I was working on something they may want to see or know for career progression.
You cant force a fork to be a spoon
noother10@reddit
Renovations at work, an entire floor was relocated to ours and were working out of every desk and meeting room we had. One of the meeting rooms had a bunch of staff plus a printer (MFP). The printer wasn't working as one of the service desk guys had a look. Half an hour later he came back telling me that the printer is broken and we should log a service ticket for it with the manufacturer.
Instead I decide to double check myself and make sure it wasn't something silly, but to also confirm the serial as everything had been moved and I wasn't sure which one it was. Printer was off, power switch on the side did nothing. Checked the power cable, it went to a wall outlet... that was off... I turned it on, printed booted, did a test print, all good.
That service desk guy was very good with people, everyone loved him, but not that good at troubleshooting issues.
goblin-socket@reddit
Dude is in his forties and is tier 1? Dude, I hit tier 2 when I was 26. Wasn't long before I was basically running the help desk as tier 3.
I did have four tier 1's who were older: one had paused his career to be a stay at home dad while his wife was the breadwinner. So he came back just to earn some extra scratch after the kids were on their own. That dude was really chill, and he did struggle with tech, I just kept him close to me (we sat in the same cube, right next to one another). So he was "tier 2" in so far as I would have the tier 1's transfer to him if they couldn't solve it/were fucking up. That guy just had the people skills needed to stop the bitching while I just listened in on the call and fixed it.
Had two other older guys, both of them were late 50's, mid-sixties respectively. Both had bad attitudes towards the users and coworkers alike. Both were highly inept with technology; one was more into downloading Frank Zappa, campy movies, and Riff Trax, and that's the one who would say the most inappropriate shit to customers and users alike. And god, he would just throw a fucking tantrum when he would try to escalate to tier 2 and I would stop him and tell him the fix.
Big fat guy. He finally became tolerable after I guess his doctor told him his heart was shit, and guess he swallowed the Little Book of Calm (Black Books reference, the pilot).
The older guy, also overweight, was pretentious and smug to no end. In fact, users and customers that I had to deal with were just pissed because he belittled them. When I took him off the phones to explain how much of an asshole he was, he talked down to me and said that I was an idiot and I didn't deserve respect because I was an uncivilized unruly punk. (I do enjoy music, and was playing in bands at the time.) And I wasn't his boss, so he didn't have to listen to me.
The next day, the general director, IT director, and HR had themselves a little meeting with him. Oh, if he had a tail, it would have been curling so hard it would have hit his belly button.
As he came back, I nonchalantly said, "Hey man, what was all that about?" without getting up from my chair. He didn't say a word or look at me, sat down at his station and starting taking calls.
And the members of the team that were there for that discussion the night before (I didn't know he was going to escalate when I was only suggesting empathy) were staring at me wide-eyed, like "oh shit, oh no you didn't!" and trying not to laugh.
IllustriousBonus9371@reddit
I’m a network engineer these days, but still relevant because I deal with a lot of level 1 techs in data centers.
I work at a company that has a footprint in 1000 data centers globally and my team small team manages everything that goes in and out, this was maybe 5 years ago and our SOP’s were a bit relaxed.
One of our PM’s needed a core router removed after we’d done an upgrade in a major data center in a major US city that was not only a large customer base for us but was a route for a lot of our inter city connectivity. Requested “please remove device form RUXX” and left it at that. Tech proceeded to remove literally everything from our entire rack (10ish routers plus everything for management), and before any of our support team watching network monitoring could figure out what was going on, he’d knocked out 300 customers. All our customers are huge corporations as well, so god knows how many end users were actually impacted.
Got the tech back on the phone eventually, of course no cables were labeled, all we had to go off were our own internal database records of the 1000+ fiber patched within the rack. Tech spent 14 hours re-racking every device and going 1 by 1 on the phone re-running around 700 patch cables that weren’t in any sort of sequential order
Anyway, SOP’s changed a tad after this happened
ThoriumOverlord@reddit
I’ve had a coworker on my team for about five years now who after five years absolutely does not understand what he’s doing, and not from the lack of training or constant reminding of the most simple concepts or procedure that can literally be googled and completed in a few minutes.
After years of a steady stream of excuses, blatant lies, and even going to people on other teams for assistance, he lost the very last ounce of respect from me by telling me he does understand the words I write in our group chat and that I need to vocally explain to him what I need. After five years of brain dumping all I could for what we were working for future reference, I realized he was a complete waste of my time, in a position where 95% of our work is reading, the requests from other teams are written (which he constantly has issues with), and lots and lots of log and error message reading (which he has issues with) to the point I gave him four lines of a log file where the error literally say “error is this, here’s how to fix” and he has to ask another guy on our ten where it was.
The only problem bigger than him is management won’t do a damned thing about it because we can’t keep them long enough to catch on to the fraud.
This guy has been booted from all but a couple teams in our department and those remaining teams refuse to take him. He’s earned the title of “restraining order” because he shouldn’t be allowed with in 100’ of any electronic device up to and including toasters.
KickedAbyss@reddit
Environmental-Ad8402@reddit
Yup. We have a "devops" that doesn't understand how pipelines work. This "DevOps" does everything manually. Doesn't know what Ansible is. I like to say, he can't tell Python from a dildo.
Im technically subordinate to him. I'm just a lowly sysadmin. I'm the one that set the use of Terraform, AWX, forced the use of Ansible for things he was doing by hand, brought in Kubernetes, Prometheus based monitoring, everything. Irl, I'm the DevOps. But he's paid more than me for doing less
Frequent_Fly4853@reddit
Devops is a BS title anyway. All the things you described that you do are basic
Environmental-Ad8402@reddit
I agree. tbh, DevOps isn't a job title, it's a way of working. But it became a job title which is why I'm bitching. And when it's paid more than me, but I know more, I can't help but be salty.
Frequent_Fly4853@reddit
Yeah that's unfortunate. Is there someone that you could speak to about this? I know a L1 Tech that just got a DevOps position with no experience/relevant skills.
I feel like that position is filled with incompetent people lol.
Environmental-Ad8402@reddit
Management knows already. This DevOps is on a pip already, but theres a process to firing that takes a while. Gotta have that paper trail. They see I've done more in 6 months that this guy has done in 6 years.
I'm going to petition management to give me the position because there is a clear difference in skills between me and him. But I'm not holding my breath one bit.
Krigen89@reddit
At least you have the opportunity to do those things, that's great!
Build your CV. Bounce eventually. Profit.
ieatsilicagel@reddit
Just bear in mind that everyone is someone's "that tech" at some point
spazztic_puke@reddit
Sounds like my old coworker 🥲
OldeFortran77@reddit
Worked with a really old fellow they were desperately trying to keep "useful" until he could retire. A consultant wrote him a lovely little utility to add accounts. He'd create the account, but then the account wouldn't work. Eventually I discovered that the utility kept EVERY keystroke, and by EVERY I mean backspaces. It was literally creating account names and directories with unprintable characters, which of course weren't very obvious at first glance.
Glass_Call982@reddit
I had a tech that caused a companies exchange server to be down for an entire day because he thought messages being stuck in the outbox was caused by some random IIS error in the log from weeks before. I had the day off otherwise it would have been resolved in 15 minutes.
arslearsle@reddit
Level 1 servicedesk are scheduled to answer servicedesk calls all day?
Quinnlos@reddit
I’ve had my share of these guys.
My favorite was a level 1 tech we hired that swore that he was tech savvy just “backend” whatever that means as a level 1 technician.
We were training him on basics, Zendesk for ticketing, Jira for project updates from Engineers, Confluence for documentation.
Had he used literally any of that, he maybe would’ve lasted the quarter.
What really ended up getting him canned is that backend was just code for “I don’t know how to talk to end users and don’t intend to know.” Every single person he spoke to he came off as cut and dry, not typically a problem in the business except that he also had to correct himself multiple times over mis-speaks to users or for being overly jargon-centric in a user facing role.
I’m not going to say that I’ve never been guilty of being overly technical, but this guy was talking to users like he was ready to pass the work off their way to wrap up alongside a documentation link.
In all, he got let go because he just couldn’t pick up a single skill that we were trying to pass his way, and whenever we took issue with his behavior or general strategy it was always a failing of something outside of himself. Best of wishes to him and glad that he’s out of my hair.
SkyrakerBeyond@reddit
We had a similar person a few years back. Hired on for one department but wasn't suited for it, shuffled around to our department but had issues keeping up with ticket rate and was eventually let go after a time entry review revealed they'd been doing nonsense tasks that are already handled by our automation.
Nice person, but too much social anxiety.