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definitely at work here. They did some sort of re-org over the past few years and clustered people into groups of responsibilities. Now, to complete task A, I have to open a request, group B gets it, needs to coordinate with group C, then we need a Teams meeting to discuss requirements (copy a vm, this is hard? are you serious?), the meeting ends and the groups go back under their bushes.
Two days later, the request is closed with no explanation. In the past, we had a local IT group we could have a reasonable face to face with. With Covid, the manager disappeared, he may have retired. Of the three remaining, two have retired, and the last guy is likely looking for a new job.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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charlieg wrote: Two days later, the request is closed with no explanation.
That is a process problem.
You should ask that the process require that all closed tickets, regardless of source, must provide sufficient detail. Note that 'closed' means success, failure or will not be implemented.
Then 5 years from now when it attempted again someone can find that original ticket and see what happened with it.
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Well, apparently the survey with all 1's got somebody's attention, and I received a call from a relatively senior manager. He took the time to explain the overall situation across the corporation, apologizing for the terse closure notes on the ticket.
The discussion was honest and product, and in the end I apologized for losing my temper. The biggest problem with the corporate IT group is that the never share any information (based on his description of how much work they had to do, they are sorely understaffed).
The fail on my part was that I got frustrated and forgot the basic rule of people at work - most really want to do a good job.
Now, as for the chat bot at the bank.... Jamie must die.  . Jamie is the name of the help agent - computer - not a live person (in case the fbi reads this)
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I've always figured intelligence is akin to resistance. Therefore the intelligence of a group is Ohm's Law for resisters in parallel.
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Lemme guess, ISO-9000 compliance is a bullet point on the company's checklist...?
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To be fair though, the business isn't all that bad. There are some very good people on that side of the fence, but they are generally about as technical as a turnip. Which means, it's up to the tech side to speak up with issues that are tech related.
Of course, there are some arse-wipes on that side too. Same goes for devs though. 
Jeremy Falcon
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every company I've worked for has championed ISO-9000 for no discernible reason . If I had to comment on some management directions that have come and gone, I can live with ISO9000. One task was that every desk had to have a common work organization. Out came the tape and label maker for keyboard, stapler, phone, etc.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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As a business owner myself, I get hammered by slick marketing companies trying to tell me "I Need ISO9000 Certification"
Drives me $£%£^$ bonkers.
I'm literally a "one man band", I hire contractors from time to time when I need them, I've been doing I.T. now for about 40 years, and it's the same approach over and over and over again...
"Oh look there's a stupid CEO with no tech skills, lets tell him what tech stuff he needs (That we will supply) to stay alive in this world"
As for the corp IT team, yea I feel the pain. If you think it's bad looking from the outside in, you wanna try being on the inside.
I've done both positions in my career, inside most of these teams how anything gets done most of the time is beyond me.
I was a junior lacky on one team, not much responsibility, simple jobs like checking tickets etc. I was hired, sent on a "Prince 2", "Cobit" and various other "Process Management" courses, I was away from the actual job with all of these for about 2 months, then when I came back, my position was terminated a month later because I was surplus to requirements.
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The weirdest part about iso-9000 is that all you need to know to pass is where is your doc? You don't have to follow it....
A few years ago, the auditors decided they wanted to talk to the s/w people. They were amazed and excited that we have version control. 
I guess when I retire, I'll study where it came from 
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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My theory is "I.T. support teams" are what "Software Development teams" WILL BECOME if we ever stop pushing back against management and their stupid practices
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charlieg wrote: every company I've worked for has championed ISO-9000 for no discernible reason
Company I worked for did that because they did contracts and the companies would ask for certifications as part of agreeing to the contract.
At another company PCI certification was required. And any company that knew what they were doing when they signed up required that certification from that company.
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If you think humans are clueless now... just wait another 100 years when more generations that have to do even less with their minds pop out. Thinking, like horseback riding, will be reserved for the few.
Jeremy Falcon
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Your message reminds me the "Wall-E" film. The humans in the spaceship
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Thinking, like horseback riding, will be reserved for the few.
100 years? It's already happened. We British go horse riding. To quote Michael McIntyre, only Americans need it spelling out which part of the horse they're supposed to sit on.
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Well, there is that statue of King Wenceslas riding a dead horse upside down, so perhaps the Czech's need it spelled out also. :P
FWIW, here in Texas, it's simply called "riding" (with horses being the default beast of burden, followed by motorcycles).
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ACRowland wrote: only Americans need it spelling out which part of the horse they're supposed to sit on.
Yeah well... arrogance isn't not the trait of the intelligent either.
Jeremy Falcon
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Yup.....
Even mike judge said it...
"I never expected my film to become reality"
Idiocracy
Idiocracy - Wikipedia
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I can relate.... sadly 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Being the wizard I am, I was askedtold to to implement a chat bot.
I refused. I could not see myself implementing something I hate to use myself.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.
To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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I feel you!!
We had a hardware shutdown on some old lappie's a few months ago. As per IT policy, you are not allowed to replace, modify, kick, scream at, throw or jump on any said hardware without them checking, confirming, ordering, waiting 6 weeks from cheapest vendor and installing said hardware.
3 Days after ticket generation, 10 year old look-alike arrives, GOOGLE the issue (after we disclosed the error messages and issues - graphic cards were shot) and off he went. Ticket were now sent from his office to head office, then back to regional, then back to head office and lastly to our office for final approval (some accountants got involved to ease the approval and ordering process!)
a Few days later we were asked why certain reports shows a back-log, ahmmmm, "Did you approve the hardware replacement?" No, but about those reports..... 
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Myself I realize that humans are messy and disorganized. There are no good ol' days where that wasn't true. Someone probably died because the wedge they used on a block when building an Egyptian pyramid was the wrong size.
Now selective memory on the other hand is true. They have proven that.
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I know exactly how you feel. I worked in IT for a small, very specialized group in a large (5000+) corporation. Fortunately my group maintained the hardware/software for a corporate core function (AGC/SCADA/electric utility). As such we were insulated from the rest of the IT insanity. Eventually to further insulate us we were removed completely from IT and put directly under the engineers in charge of transmission/distribution (another hell, but at least a lesser one).
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Greetings,
as Mark Twain once stated:
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
Cegarman
document code? If it's not intuitive, you're in the wrong field 
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Much like my days with Orange Mobile Comms.
I was a GSM/Radio Access/Network Engineer, and we had for anything I.T.to have to call the I.T. team who sat at the other end of the office from us.
In fact most times, I could ring "I.T. Support", look over the divider and watch someone pick the phone up and answer it.
The funny part was, I.T. support had to get permission from the network engineering teams to enter the data centre's and server rooms, so we could quite often phone I.T. support, watch the call get answered, then watch that person make a call to "Network" which would then ring on the phone beside me, which I would then answer and confuse the hell out the person on the other end.
Nothing ever got done, because we spent more time following process than getting anything done.
So upper management thought it would be a great idea to combine the Network Teams, and the I.T. support teams into one large "Tech Operations" team.
Not for one moment did they consider that the engineers on the Network teams where also high access certified (We looked after all aspects including GSM, and that often meant climbing phone masts) they just looked at it from the point of view that we "The Network Team" where just specialised I.T. Monkeys that did "Networky Stuff".
So all of a sudden you had all these general I.T. support guys suddenly being sent out into the field and not having a clue what they where doing, and experienced guys who should have been out in the field answering support calls to fix printers in managers offices.
It get's better though......
So to FIX that problem, they removed field work from all I.T. & Network personnel completely, made us all sit answering phones all day, then farmed out the actual work to a 3rd party company, costing them 3 times what they paid the already trained trained guys that where on the payroll, then they set up a help line for the contractors to phone into the I.T. help desk to help them when they didn't know how to do something on the network or on any I.T. problem inside the organization.
Stuff like this just never ceases to amaze me.
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Like Hecklefish said the other night, "If we are going to rely on Humans to teach AI morality, we're screwed..."
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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