Tales from the $Facility: Part 1 - What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Posted by Mr_Cartographer@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 38 comments

Hello y'all! I'm sorry that it has taken me so long to get these stories written up, but it has been an extremely eventful past two years. In any case, this is my first story from my new job at the $Facility. All of this is from the best of my memory along with some personal records (and I have started taking notes specifically so I can write stories for TFTS!) There's also a lot that comes from rumors, gossip, and other people, but most of this is very recent, so any inaccuracies are entirely on me. Also, I don't give permission for anyone else to use this.

TL/DR: The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. To the car. To drive the rest of the thousand miles. Wait, where would I need to drive to that's a thousand miles from here?

For some context, I'm not in IT; rather, I'm a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) professional. This particular world is quite small, so I will do what I can to properly anonymize my tale. However, for reference, all these stories take place at my new job working as the GIS Manager at the $Facility, a major industrial entity in the American South. Here's my Dramatis Personae for this part:

So it begins.

When last I left off, I was walking through the doors into the $Facility. It was my very first day. I was more than a little bit nervous, truth be told. After all, this was the highest profile job I'd ever had! It was the first time I'd be a GIS Manager right from the get-go, without having to jump through hoops to get myself a promotion. And I certainly wanted to make a good impression on my first day.

There were plenty of other reasons for the butterflies playing basketball in my stomach. I'd moved here from my hometown a few days prior. I was living in a tiny apartment in an unfamiliar area that was about 30 miles away from the office. My wife and daughter would be joining me in a month; we'd be living in the apartment while waiting for our new house to be built. Moreover, I'd be buying this house on my own credit and laurels; it was the first time I'd ever gone through the mortgage process (which was a nightmare, btw). It was a lot to deal with, on top of starting a new job! And we'd had to change where my daughter would be starting school, and look for a new job for my wife, and all kinds of things... All of this was weighing heavily on my mind.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? I was still very excited to get started. I knew that the primary remit of this job was to construct an entire GIS architecture from the ground up. And I had done that in the past - twice, in fact! I had every bit of confidence that I could do that here, as well. It was time to get settled in so that I could show my new coworkers what I could do! excitedface.png

The guard at the desk ushered me into a huge training room, where there were at least a dozen other people. I'd be part of the training class hosted today. We went over everything you'd expect - paperwork, leave policies, HR directives, who to report to, safety training, and so on. Eventually, the cybersecurity manager spoke to us - his presentation consisted entirely of xkcd comics. It was glorious :) Anyways, just after lunch, they dismissed me. I went over to the IT staff in the back of the room to get my credentials to log in for the first time. $Kathleen and $Scotty were there, folks that I didn't know at the time, but that I'd get to know very well over the coming years.

$Scotty gave me a slip of paper with my email address and a temporary password. He then asked me what I'd be doing.

$Me: I'm the new GIS Manager. Very excited to get started!

$Scotty: GIS Manager... wait, you're not with IT?

$Me: Um, no, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I'm in the Engineering Department.

$Scotty: Huh, that's odd. Well, no worries. Let us know if you need anything!

$Me (smiling uncertainly): Um, no problem! Thanks!

My first interaction with one of the $Facility's IT staff - and they didn't know what department I was supposed to be in? They thought I was supposed to be in IT? You'd have thought that, of all people, their department would have known something like that. Were they not informed of my arrival? I tried to put it out of my mind, but the uncertainty gnawed at me a little bit. Precisely as those clearly-defined, rigid areas of doubt should, lol :)

I made my way to the Engineering floor. There to meet me was $Distinguished, the same very sharply-dressed gentleman that had interviewed me a few months before. He was my new boss. He took me around the department to meet everyone, and I got a chance to say hello. I also noticed that, despite me approaching 40 years old, I was the youngest person on the team...

$Distinguished then led me to my cubicle. I put my stuff down and looked at my workstation. It was just a little Dell laptop, sitting in a docking station on the desk. The screen was pretty small. I quickly logged in to see if I could check the specs of the machine. While I did so, I asked $Distinguished if they had any GIS software already - an Esri account or anything?

$Distinguished: No, we don't really have anything yet. I'm trusting that to you. And I assume that you'll handle our account. On that note, while I want you to handle our GIS software, we'll need you to run everything through the IT team. I'll see if I can get you around the table with $VPofIT as soon as possible. We also have several questions about how the environment will proceed going forward. I've got a meeting set up for you and the IT Server Team on Thursday. We'll also have the reps from $GiantCo on that call. They were the ones that originally pitched the idea of having GIS capability here at the $Facility, so I think it would be good for you to meet them.

$Me: Alright. In the meantime, I've got some ideas for things I can do - putting together a plan of attack, drafting out an organizational structure for this environment, and brainstorming public GIS datasets I can download to start populating a data warehouse.

$Distinguished (smiling): Sounds good. Check in with me if you have any more questions.

By this point, I'd managed to load up the system settings on my laptop. There was no GPU, and only 8 Gb of memory. There wasn't even a decent-sized hard drive for me to save my work, only a 200 Gb solid state drive. My head slowly intercepted the desk. This thing wouldn't even run ArcGIS Pro on its lowest settings. Looks like I'd need to talk to IT about hardware requirements, too. And once I got some software, for now ArcMap would have to do :/

It seemed to me like there was remarkably little preparation for me to be coming onboard to build this architecture. As I was to find out, this was absolutely the case. The original pitch by the Engineering Department for a GIS Team had been recommended by $GiantCo. When $Distinguished had asked to hire a GIS Manager, apparently the IT leadership had become concerned and told him, "Why are you getting an IT person who isn't in the IT Department?" They thought this position would be a threat to their department, authority, and oversight. Folks, GIS is not IT!!! That will be one of the many epitaphs on my eventual tombstone. Anyways, when the Engineering Department would up getting the position approved anyway, the IT staff gave $Distinguished and the other engineers the cold shoulder about it. Basically nothing had been set up until the day I arrived. So now, not only was I facing the difficulties inherent in trying to create a workable GIS architecture, I would also be fighting against an IT department that apparently did not want to support me in these efforts.

Well that sucks.

But I refused to let these things put me down. So I got to work. I drafted up a ton of organizational things (just as Word documents) and sent them off to my team. I started locating good public sources of data that I might need - such as stuff from the US Census Bureau, NAIP Imagery, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and multiple public agencies in my own state. I also reached out to the counties and cities near us, trying to build connections and get data from them. I realized extremely quickly that my own internal storage in my laptop was decidedly insufficient to handle all of this, so I reached out to one of the server guys, $GlamRock, to see if there was a network location I could save things to. Unfortunately, he said they didn't have anything set up for me just yet. So, this being the case, I reached out to $Kathleen instead and asked to purchase a 2 Tb external hard drive. It cost $60; she had it to me that afternoon. I started saving everything I'd been working on to that hard drive.

That's right, folks - the first stab at a GIS architecture for this multi-billion dollar industrial concern... was saved to a single external hard drive plugged into a laptop. Lol.

Anyways, a few days after I started, I sat down in my first meeting with the IT Server Team. $GlamRock was there, along with $Distinguished, and we had a Teams call open with the reps from $GiantCo. It was at this meeting that they gave me my first glimpses at what kind of decisions had been made regarding GIS prior to me getting there. It had been... frankly... kind of a sh!tshow.

So this whole project had started about a year before. $GiantCo had rolled out a webmap service for the engineering and facilities teams for one of our new campuses. The engineers ate it up with a spoon. Prior to $GiantCo doing this, the $Facility's collective attitude had been "Why do we need GIS for anything we do?" After the webmap was rolled out, the opinion changed instead to "Why can't we have this EVERYWHERE!?!" $Distinguished, who had worked with GIS professionals in the past and already knew how useful it could be, pitched the creation of a GIS department to the leadership of the $Facility. Eventually, the leadership agreed. They set aside a large budget for development and contracted a hefty portion of this to $GiantCo for the implementation of a GIS enterprise environment.

Unfortunately, there's where the whole project started running into problems. The IT Department was pretty ticked off that this had been decided upon and budgeted for without their input or consideration. Moreover, they didn't want to have to support something that they didn't have oversite over and that would potentially exist outside their security protocols. A completely sensible attitude, truth be told. I mean, after all, who wants to get stuck supporting the "power user" they didn't hire that still gets confused that the monitor isn't the computer, and calls the tower the, ahem, "modem"? As such, IT made numerous requests of the Engineering Department and of the integrator ($GiantCo), mostly surrounding the configuration of the environment, who would be responsible for what aspects, and so on. There were also a lot of situations where the IT team flat-out said that certain aspects of the proposed environment would not be possible given the $Facility's security constraints. Eventually, dialogue between all parties broke down entirely. No one could come to a consensus on what the final architecture would even look like. And once the Engineering Department stated they would try to hire a GIS Manager, pretty much all discussion ceased. Everyone involved would look to the new GIS Manager to coordinate between the various sides, and to make a final decision on the environment.

That GIS Manager... was $Me. Fsck. No pressure or anything.

I was to very soon realize that this position was just as much soft skills - getting people to talk, formulating positive opinions, navigating political silos and "lanes" - as it was technical ability.

After the others gave me an abbreviated history of how we had gotten here, $GlamRock asked me for some decisions. He said that the IT Department was already stretched thin as it was, and they didn't want to take on any additional major responsibilities. Also, they wanted anything that was constructed to abide by their security policies. And $GlamRock indicated that he understood how powerful GIS could be for the $Facility's operations in the future, so he recommended that we have something in place that could be scaled in the future. Due to this, there were several possibilities for our eventual environment. We could have a purely file server-based system; we could have an enterprise system hosted offsite by our contractor $GiantCo; we could have an ArcGIS Online-based system; or we could roll out ArcGIS Enterprise, either on an on-prem server or in the cloud. What was my decision?

I knew a little bit about all these options. I was very familiar with ArcGIS Online (AGOL), as I'd used it extensively in the past. I had only a passing familiarity with ArcGIS Enterprise, however. What I did know about the platform was that it was highly customizable, allowing the admins to set access and permissions with a high degree of granularity, far exceeding what was possible in AGOL. Moreover, we could configure it to be accessible purely internally, and if it was rolled out to an on-prem server, would have full control over where the data was stored. With that information in hand, I made my decision.

$Me: We should have an ArcGIS Enterprise system. That seems like it would meet most of the requirements you've made me aware of. We'll decide on the on-prem versus cloud solution later, but I'd like to get things in motion to roll this out.

$GlamRock seemed very happy that there was a decision in place. $GiantCo said they'd be on hand to assist as soon as things were ready. And $Distinguished gave an audible sigh of relief, saying that he no longer needed to be involved in these conversations. I guess he was tired of the infighting and was happy to toss that onto me instead. Thanks, bruh.

Anyways, I did what I could to get us moving in this direction. But things continued moving painfully slow. I still didn't even have any GIS software; all my work was done in other programs. I had considered using QGIS, but IT shut that down almost immediately with a "No Open Source Productivity Software" warning. What a non-surprise.

So I started holding some general meetings amongst the various departments to let them know what GIS was, and what I intended to do with it. And these meetings were eye-opening, to say the least.

It was clear to me after speaking to most of my new coworkers that they did not have the faintest clue as to what GIS even was. Just to say, for those of you that don't know, GIS is essentially a geospatial database management system. Its used to manage data in a spatial way. I have far more in common with a DBA than I do a CAD drafter. GIS means "Geographic Information Systems": Geographic, meaning that it pertains to spatial/locational phenomena; Information, meaning that it incorporates attributes, data, and analysis; and Systems, meaning that it isn't a single program, it's a whole constellation of software that taken together creates a GIS architecture.

My coworkers didn't know any of that. At all. Most of them thought GIS was nothing but pretty geometric lines on an imagery backdrop, created in some mythic software that they couldn't define. Some of them thought all I did was work in Photoshop or BlueBeam. Some thought I was a drafter. Others thought I was an IT tech. Even $GlamRock, after I wound up speaking to him as we drove off to the data center one day, told me that "GIS and CAD are basically the same." NO THEY ARE NOT. This was only a few weeks after I'd met him, and I didn't want to immediately make enemies of the people I needed to work with, so I merely said, "Well... there are some similarities." And I left it at that.

But the most shocking meeting was when I finally managed to speak with $VPofIT and most of the rest of the IT department a few weeks later. In addition to $VPofIT, I also had $GlamRock, $Kathleen, and $Scotty in there too. This meeting was mostly for me to tell the department about what I intended to do and for me to beg them to approve the software I was requesting. I told them about the things I would like to have in place, such as a decent-sized server for development and archiving, secured access into our eventual structural environments, a SQL Server instance to store and manage the data, and so on. Before I even finished speaking, $VPofIT spoke up with a number of questions, a confused look on his face.

$VPofIT: If you need SQL access, that will need to go through our existing DBAs. You can't have access to those environments outside their policies.

$Me: I'm not asking for access to your existing RDBMS structure. I just need a standalone instance set up in the new enterprise environment so that I can use it to manage the spatial data.

$VPofIT: Again, this isn't possible to do outside the existing DBA structure.

$Me (frowning): Does that mean I can't create features, push updates, set my schemas and update coded domains, all of that, without intercession from your DBA team? Because if not, that will severely restrict anything I try to accomplish as it relates to GIS.

$VPofIT (confused): Wait... coded domains? Schemas? Those are database management terms. How does that apply to GIS?

$Me (incredulous): That's... that's the heart and soul of what I do! What... did you think GIS was?

After listening to him and the others for a few more minutes, I realized that they, too, thought that GIS was just a type of CAD program. They had no idea there was data management in it. And unfortunately for me, $VPofIT then doubled-down on his convictions. Anything related to SQL needed to go through his DBA team. Nothing needed to be in the cloud, because it "wasn't secure." The users wouldn't even be able to access this stuff on our various campuses, because IT had the wifi there locked down where nobody could access the internal networks. Pretty much every single idea I had on constructing this environment and getting it provisioned to our staff had been shot down by the IT Department during this meeting. Well... fsck.

Disheartened, I wrapped everything up and went back to my cubicle. I put my face in my hands, rubbing my temples, trying to let the frustrations wash away. Eventually, not really meaning to, I said to myself:

$Me: What have I gotten myself into?

Over the next few years, I would certainly find out :)

Tomorrow you'll see the progress I was able to make as I tried to push forward with all this - and the new troubles that began brewing on the horizon. Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope you enjoy this story series. And here is my "Atlas" on TFTS with a bunch of my other stories, if you're interested:

Mr_Cartographer's Atlas, Volume 1