Learning to Say No in the Workplace? 723
Ummagumma asks: "I'm trying to find out how those of you who work in the IT service industry, tell customers 'no', when the requests are unreasonable for whatever reason. There is a culture here of 'piling-on' work with regards to IT - and, unfortunately, I've never learned the proper way to tell people 'no'. It may sound simple, but in this economy, where jobs are tough to come by, I don't want to be seen as the impediment to getting things done Any suggestions on telling people that their work request can wait? Especially in a way that won't jeopardize my future here? I've searched the web, but most of the sites that supposedly have information of this type just want you to sign up for their seminars. I'm looking for actual, real-world experiences, and how the people of Slashdot deal with this issue on a day-to-day basis."
"Here is my dilemma: I'm a relatively new employee (~2 months) at a software engineering shop. I am the sole IT person for a 100+ person company, with 50+ remote VPN users, 40+ developers, 30+ servers, firewalls, etc. I do it all, from desktop and application support, to security, to servers. In the past, the IT department has been seriously under-funded, and there is an absolute ton of catch-up work that needs to get done. At this point, I could work 70+ hour work weeks for a year, and still not be caught up, between project work, upgrade, documentation and day-to-day stuff.
I've inquired about more IT budgeting (staff, equipment, etc.), and that just is not going to happen for quite a while."
You know what they say (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sexual Harrassment (Score:3, Interesting)
And he was right. I learned to say no long ago and I still say it without any fear of repercussions.
There is a caveat: "During the interview when asked what are my problems when working if any, I always answer that I have a problem that with people who do not understand the word NO". Basically, you have to stake your right to say no from day -1. If you cannot do that you will be in trouble later.
Re:Sexual Harrassment (Score:3, Insightful)
In large organisations? Come on... if I tell my boss 'No', he's not going to come back to me waving my personnel file and complain that I forfeited my right to say 'No' during the job interview.
If you get in trouble for saying
Re:Sexual Harrassment (Score:5, Insightful)
If you get in trouble for saying "No" to unreasonable requests, maybe it's time to find a new job. If you can't do something you have to flat-out say it can't be done, and why. If you can't do something under a clear conscience, then you have to tell them no, and why you can't do it.
The crappy economy forced me to essentially become an IT contractor, which, let me assure you, beats the hell out of "would you like fries with that?" I worked at small organizations that had a max of 2 servers and maybe 10 workstations, all running a version of Windows. The longest I had stayed in one place was 3 weeks, and that was due to numerous problems left by the IT guy they recently fired. At several points in time, I was told to make all the administrator level passwords the name of the company because that was easier, and that I should do the same on the server, which holds all their client billing information, basically everything important. They also wanted the server accessible from the outside easily, so they wanted me to install a remote desktop server on this ancient NT server. When I started there, I basically told them they were wide open to an attack and to secure the computers with the name of the company as the password is asking for problems. This wasn't what they hired me for, but I could not, in good conscience, leave things the way they were, and they were glad to pay me to fix the problems they didn't know they had.
There were also several things they wanted fixed that I just could not fix. They wanted me to fix printing problems their custom software was having, and make it stop constantly crashing. Not having the source code, and being a not-too-great programmer anyway, I could not fix coding problems and told them flat-out, "There's nothing I can do to fix that problem, I can tell you why it's not working, but there's not a thing I can do about custom software." They understood this and contacted the guy who wrote it, end of problem for me and the company.
Many times (let's be realistic, 99% of the time) people requesting different IT related things have no idea what they're talking about or how to use what they're requesting should you tell them they can have what they want. In my scenario I suppose I had it easy at a couple organizations since they were contractors too, and basically understood that when you don't know how to do something, you pay someone that does. It took several days to get them to accept that they'd have to remember 8 different characters if they wanted to be secure.
That was just one problem though, I pointed out they had no backup plan and that a fire, or a malicious 12 year old on the other side of the world, could essentially shut their business down in a matter of minutes. This was what convinced them it was something to take seriously, and they started to listen when I said "no, you can't do that, you're asking to get screwed by doing that."
If you're having a problem telling someone you can't do something, or that they have unreasonable expectations, you need to relatively quickly find a weakness in the plan and tell them why what they want is bad. If the people have no idea what you're talking about when you say "leaving protocol/program/box X open like this creates a security flaw," then tell them the same thing in terms they can understand, such as "if you leave this open and something happens, you could lose all your billing information and you wouldn't know who owes you money." or "This could put you out of business if you leave it the way it is."
What's dangerous is saying yes to every request, reasonable or unreasonable. If you adopt the attitude that "eh, it's not my problem if they get cracked" then you're potentially risking the jobs of everyone employed at that company, yourself included. If you don't see a problem with that, you must be one of the people who developed security for Microsoft.
Please excuse any poor wordings of this, I just downed a double dose of nyquil because of the damned flu.
YOU shouldnt tell them ANYTHING (Score:4, Insightful)
you simply tell them their request will end up on the list and make them go away, then you make your boss prioritize your workload and/or tell these people that their request isnt worth anyone's time and effort and doesnt fit into the budget.
IF your boss is not fulfilling this role, then he is a crappy boss (cowardly) and shouldnt be managing things like this. I would begin looking for other work if I were you, since this situation wont get any better and you will stay miserable
if your boss IS capable of handling this, then maybe you are not conveying to him that you feel your workload is getting to be overbearing because of these kinds of requests. maybe he thinks you are just a go-getter workaholic type.
this is really a major function of bosses, try to use it!
re: YOU shouldnt tell them ANYTHING (Score:4, Informative)
a former manager of mine let me in on his favorite response: tell them just what it will cost.
"OK, i can do that. however, if i do that now, as you request, it will require [# of people] about [period of time] to address properly. that means [x], [y] and [z] projects will slide b/c there aren't enough appropriate resources, the ramifications of which are 1, 2 and 3. this puts me in conflict w/ [manager 1], [manager 2] and [manager 3], all of whom were waiting for [period of time] until this is done. perhaps we should all of us should discuss this so my staff's allocation can be budgeted more effectively."
more often than not, the querant cannot take on one or more of [manager 1], [manager 2] or [manager 3] and it addresses about 90-95% of the issues that cropped up. the remainder of the time however, a discussion was needed and sometimes, the querant's issue was addressed.
this means that you absolutely have to have that information at your fingertips, if not at the tip of your tongue.
ed
Give estimates (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give estimates (Score:5, Interesting)
Priorities, get priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a little story you might find enlightening, the importance of priorities in keeping requests under control. This is relevant, very relevant.
I worked with a guy who was an air force loadmaster in Vietnam, early 60s. He had some scut job at the main Saigon airbase. They used to extract carriage fees from shipments of steak and whiskey going up to the officers club at Cam Ranh Bay. One day, some ensign showed up, fresh as a daisy, said there were pallets going up to the club, and he was in charge of making sure they arrived intact, and demanded they be sent up on the next available plane. My friend had been in too long to give a shit about some wet behind the ears ensign, and furthermore, had the distinct attitude of What Are You Going To Do, Send Me To Vietnam? So he slapped a bunch of clipboards up on the counter, said fine, you tell me what cargo you want to take off, sir, and we'll see that your steak and whiskey gets up there right away sir. Now what will it be
That's the end of the relevant part of the story. Remember, make the job assigner decide not TOP priority, but where exactly on the list, so when other people complain, you can point to new jobs added above theirs. The goal is to get the suits hassling each other, not you. Don't argue with them. If they berate you, just say you need to know whose jobs to bump down the list. Be quiet and form, you need to know the positional priority.
OK, the rest of the story is more fun, not as relevant, but may help you to remember this trick.
The ensign demanded that someone stand guard over the pallets of steak and whiskey. My friend just sneered at him, Sir, you have a sidearm, why don't you use it? And the ensign did, he stood gaurd over the precious pallets for some time, until some crusty old chief, who had spit more sea water than the ensign had ever seen, showed up with a case of whiskey under one arm and a case of steaks under the other, slapped them down on the counter, and the pallets went out on the next flight.
There's a moral to that story to, but it's probably not a good idea to start taking bribes to shuffle your boss's priorities
OT: WHAT A GREAT STORY (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for the great story, and dead on to boot. Upper management types are usually not planners per-se, they are *negotiators*, and unless you find a way to push back you're going to get fsck'd.
Re:OT: WHAT A GREAT STORY (Score:5, Informative)
I understand priorities; but changing a company's culture (as this person will need to do to be successful) is a difficult task. It's not about prioritizing: it's about changing the process. We (I.T.) struggle with it so much at my place of work. Trying to get upper management to work with us on setting priorities and sticking to them is terribly difficult when the owner and associated YES!-people have "shiny-thing" syndrome.
Injecting structure into a process that for the last 20 years has had little formality is (IMHO) a gargantuan task...
Re:OT: WHAT A GREAT STORY (Score:4, Insightful)
Trying to get upper management to work with us on setting priorities and sticking to them
Amen.
That introduces the corollary of the first rule, [which was to make a prioritized list of what you're working on and to make higher-ups insert the new task where they believe it should be.]
The corollary is that whenever the top priority changes, there is an associated cost associated with dropping project X like a bomb and spinning up to speed on project Y.
In OS lingo, there's a cost to swapping tasks.
Likewise, there's an similar added cost associated with multi-tasking in general.
Any manager worth his salt ought to know that when you fragment a person's effort into more than a couple of different simultaneous projects that you'll pay a price for doing so.
IOW, if my time is devoted 20% to Project X, 20% to Project Y, etc., you can bet you'll be getting 15% quality time on each project. The rest of the time I'll be swapping, worrying in the back of my mind about the other 4 tasks ongoing issues while I work on the current task.
Re:OT: WHAT A GREAT STORY (Score:5, Informative)
This is a very common misconception. It doesn't matter if you're on salary. It only matters if you're exempt or not. The kicker is that your employer doesn't get to choose whether you're exempt or not. The federal government does. Being a salaried employee is only one step of many, many steps that need to be taken so an employee doesn't get overtime. I've got a LOT more information, if anybody would like it. I'm currently involved in a lawsuit where I'm suing my former employer for unpaid overtime, willful violation of the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act), and retaliatory action (wrongful termination). If all goes well, I could end up fairly well-to-do.
Re:Give estimates (Score:5, Insightful)
the best "no" is a qualified "yes". of course, for this to work - and to avoid the bad blood that a "sure, but it'll be ten weeks and $9000" will generate - you must get everything in writing!
i can't stress this enough. a lot of clients don't really understand what they are dealing with and thus forget what exactly it was they requested. for your benefit and theirs make sure you get it all in writing! take minutes. do as much via email as possible. get a written specification before you start. that way you can always remind the client of what they originally spec'd and the changes they have made and how it is affecting time and money.
don't "underestimate" this advice! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, this is basically all there is to it. Use whatever calendaring software you have to break down what you're doing on a daily or weekly basis, if not hourly. Even a recurring to-do list is good. The idea is to show that your time is not an infinite resource.
If you can sit down and say something like "I can make time for this project this month, but it will require moving back those security updates for a week, and the database migration for a few days. Also, we're running low on shared drive space and there's no budget to augment the servers, so to add this in, I'll have to put everyone on a harsher quota for the next few days (and delete your mp3s off your shared drive)," and show how your time is mapped, they will see why they can't reasonably expect you to take on more work.
You'll also be able to get more actual work done, because the mere act of organizing your regular activities will let you see ways to cluster them for more efficiency ("oh, while this disk image is copying, I can hit that next item on the list, replace the video cable on that secretary's computer so she'll stop holding my mail hostage"), etc.
Also, at the end of six months or a year, maybe you can use the resulting log as evidence that you need an assistant or a pay raise or both. It's also good for remembering what to put on your resume, if your small company decides to lay you off and replace you with two kids who just graduated and also happen to be related to the VPs...
Re:don't "underestimate" this advice! (Score:5, Funny)
I could almost hear your teeth gritting... "those bastards!"
Re:don't "underestimate" this advice! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, most of what I related came from friends who worked in IT before all getting laid off. I decided that those would be a lot more relevant than my own anecdotes, which mostly have to do with juggling
In addition to all those, I also had my regular duties, which included supporting the customer routing infrastructure, then still taking weekly turns on 24-hour pager duty after I was too busy to do the daily support. Oh, and maybe a few escorted colo visits. And calls from the company president's office to fix other departments' problems. And that emergency customer premises visit...
I figured if I said anything about those, I'd get cranky, or you'd get bored, or think I'm desperate to show off so someone will hire me (I made it through 3 rounds of layoffs cleaning up the messes, but there were at least 4 rounds, so you'd be right about that), or I'd say too much and get sued by my former employer (I've just gone back and removed most of my text. But my former bosses can still reconize me immediately), and none of these really sound like system administration issues, which is what the root article is about, so I won't.
Too bad, too, because I could have mentioned how I got the decommission done with a month to spare. And how I did the last year of projects and support 90% from home, especially after the secretaries, then some fellow engineers, then my boss got laid off, and the office lost its soda budget! Oh, and that all the work at home was done over dialup, frequently at rates like 21.6K.
But who wants to hear about those things?
Re:don't "underestimate" this advice! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:don't "underestimate" this advice! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that there is not enough money to pay for the people that are actually necessary to get the job done. It's not that the things are unimportant, they are all important, and there should be more employees on the job handling the requests, but there are not because people can't afford them. I think in this situation it sounds like the company knows that they need to hire more IT staff, but they are not doing it because they can't afford it.
I don't know if there is really any good way to deal with this problem other than get another job - depending on how much you care about your sanity. It's amazing how it all tends to get done at the end of the day!
My greatest concern with this kind of thing is that when being short-staffed is a modus operandi, the employee is never able to excel - the employee is never able to really do their best, it's like being "set up" or something. This might leave you with references that are not 100% of what they could be, and it certainly may lead you to a situation where you are not leaving the positive impression on others that you are capable of leaving on others.
A long time ago, I worked at a limousine company, and we got a new manager (the drivers made more money than the managers) who was fairly overzealous when it came to taking orders. We got to a point after a few days of this guy working for us where we were about 25 minutes behind on every order. 25 minutes late for a pickup, you can forget about a tip. You can't do that. You take as many orders as you can, and then you don't take any more. Sorry, we are booked up. That way, everything you do is done on time and done properly and done well. Overbooking yourself is pointless, you try to do too much, and none of it ends up getting done on time, or being done well. It's not worth it!
A hairdresser is another good example. How many hairdressing appointments can you schedule? Only so many. After that, forget it. Booked up. And the nature of how hairdressers get paid means they get paid more if they work more. More appointments equals more money for them. In many of these new dot com jobs and jobs like the one in this article, there is no "appointment book" and an employee's time is easily misunderstood. Right now, in jobs like this, it's learning who you can blow off and who you can't, who you can string along and who you can't - lots of people will just not say anything, and some people will bitch all the time. Those are the ones that get their stuff taken care of. It's the only way to do it. In this case, the timid get blown off. It's a horrible thing to do, some of the nicest people being ignored because they are not being difficult.
Companies have been doing this recently, and it is very irritating. It's almost to the point where going independent, selling some gadget on Ebay, or landscaping, or some other self-employment kind of thing is going to be easier than it is to work that hard for someone else. If you are going to do the job of three employees then why not open up your own small business?
This issue is really about the proper management of your own human resources. You have to be your own agent, and make sure you are not getting taken advantage of. How do you 1) pay your bills and 2) not get taken advantage of at the same time? Much harder than walking and chewing gum, especially in this time of economic hardships and crappy economies.
Even if you did document how much time you spend doing this or that to prove that you need assistants, the company knows this already, but they won't hire someone. Makes you wonder why we have these blackouts. It's irresponsible from the employer's side.
Combine with Priotities (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes; this is good advice.
Saying no is usually a bad idea and practically impossible irl with more senior personnel,managers, directors. No, creates bad feeling on the part of the rejected requester. It is much better to help them understand their request in context. You should seek to priorities this workload into what is Urgent and what is Important. Many things that are urgent, are not important, and many things that are important are not urgent. Understand the di
Timeline estimate guidelines. (Score:5, Insightful)
New programmer fresh out of college: Take his estimate and multiply by 8x. Yes he could get it done in 1 day, assuming he got so cranked up on caffeine his eyes stopped blinking and he worked on that (and nothing else) for 24 hours straight. In the real world a newbie can dedicate about 2 real hours doing a particular task each day, the rest is spent coming up to speed on corporate coding standards and libraries, email, breaks, and not 'in the groove'.
Veteran programmer of average skill, single person project : multiply his estimate by 3x. A third of his day is spent hand-holding the newbie, and another third is spent hand-holding management. The other third is spent programming, but luckily he knows to pad the schedule some (not enough, but some.)
Veteran programmer of uber skill, single person project : multiply his estimate by 2x. This is as good as it gets. A uber veteran programmer knows to leave his email client closed and his door closed so he can stay in the zone. He knows to pad the schedule more than he really thinks he should. And it still takes him twice as long as he expected.
Multiple people working on the same project : increase the timeline by a factor of 1.2 per additional person. If two people ought to be able to do it in 10 days it will take 12. If 11 people (10 additional) ought to be able to do it in 10 days it will take
Say You'd Like to Help... (Score:3, Interesting)
Then you're sort of playing good cop/bad cop, using your boss as the bad guy
You can't do this on everything, or you'll really get on other employees' bad sides.
Re:Give estimates (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Give estimates (Score:5, Funny)
1. Give an estimate of how long (in man-hours) it'll take to do project D.
2. Point out (nicely) that you nonetheless currently have A, B and C to do.
3a. If A, B and C are all from the same person who's currently asking you to do D, ask them which they'd like done first.
3b. If not, send them to discuss it with whoever wants A, B and C. Taking part in the resulting discussion/turf war/semi-automatic weapons fire is optional. Obviously, there's leeway here. If A, B and C are "tidy up and label the patch panel"-style tasks, and D is "Fix the file server 50 people use", you know what to do. But if it's not patently obvious that D's more important, a discussion's warranted. If you *think* D is more important, call the person who wants A, B and C and let them know that someone wants D and ask if it'd be OK to do that now and come back to A, B and C. If they say no, get person-for-D and person-for-ABC to discuss it.
4. Waste time on Slashdot only when you *don't* have four tasks on the go.
5. Pro^H^H^HHappiness!
Outline risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give estimates (Score:4, Interesting)
MS Project rules in this environment! (Score:4, Interesting)
**Keep it maintained at all times** - it only takes a few minutes to maintain it once you've got it set up.
**Be realistic with your time estimates** - if you don't know how to build a firewall, then allow a lot of time to do it.
**Remember that you aren't productive 40 hours a week** - depending on your role, you'll probably only do productive work 30-80% of the time, and if you're the only techo guy in the shop I'm betting you'd be somewhere below 80% productive. Reading email, going to meetings, cigarette breaks - they all chew into your 40 hours per week. Once you decide how productive you truly are, factor it into the project plan by saying the resource (you!) is only e.g. 60% available.
Then, when someone comes up and asks you to manually install virus checkers on these 43 new PCs, put it in your project plan, show how every other task you've got blows out by 2 weeks and see if your boss is prepared to accept the delay.
If you're at a place where they pay for overtime, enter all your time estimates in hours and do a few "what if" scenarios on your resource allocation (i.e. you!) to show how long things will take if you work 30, 40, 50, 60,
Without a doubt, the best/only way to get out of a situation where you're overworked is to be extremely organised and able to show anyone at a moment's notice exactly how busy you are. Once your boss can see the true impact of giving you "just one more" task, in terms of the slippage that will impact other projects, you'll be amazed how that extra work will no longer be as important
PS If anyone knows an OSS MS Project replacement that can do all this stuff, please speak up. I've been dying to replace it for ages, but it's a really good fit for this particular problem space
Re:MS Project rules in this environment! (Score:5, Informative)
PS If anyone knows an OSS MS Project replacement that can do all this stuff, please speak up. I've been dying to replace it for ages, but it's a really good fit for this particular problem space
DotProject [dotproject.net] is almost there, still in beta tho but ive been using it for a few weeks and its perfectly usable.
OSS is different (Score:3, Insightful)
40 hours a week!? Productive for 30% of that!? You panzy. I have worked 40 hours in two days on many occasions. (Yes, I also have a "real" job.)
Re:OSS is different (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience, and observation of those around me, it's really hard increasing a 40 hour week to 50-55 hours. Adding 12 hours probably only adds a further 8-10 of real work. Beyond that it gets easier as most people are then unable to maintain a life outside work too. However, adding 10 hours more probably only adds a max of 5 hours real work, and it's gets worse as the hours pile up. Tired people are slow, mistake-prone and unproductive. Furthermore, once social life outside work stops, people start getting the social contact they need at work. They stop for more short chats, joke around more, etc. It's great for the work environment and back-slapping cliques, but it's not good for productivity.
What do you do? Work to live, or live to work? Do you work ridiculous hours just to make somebody else rich, or do you have your own business? Sorry, but this whole macho "I work more hours than you" routine is just stupid. It doesn't garner any respect from me - it means you have no life and are probably somebody else's whore.
Re:Give estimates (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Give estimates (Score:5, Interesting)
How to refuse work...
Never say "no" to a client, since you will lose the client. To refuse work, raise the cost until the client decides it is not worthwhile. It is not a problem to appear "expensive" so long as this is always related to "quality" and "performance" in the mind of the client. Perception is everything.
For an employee, the pressures are different ("do this or I fire your ass") but the trick is the same: make your boss responsible for the tradeoffs that too much work implies. Give him a choice: "OK, I can do this or that, which do you prefer?"
Don't complain about getting too much work. It's really a much, much better situation to be in than to have too little work, and you will often find that many "urgent" issues get relegated and finally abandoned when the boss actually has to make a choice.
Lastly, always appear to make the best effort you can, since what counts at the end of the day is not how you actually performed, but how people perceived your performance. Smile, agree, react quickly and professionally, work well with your colleagues, never blame others but be quick to take blame on yourself, and you will find that your boss / clients respect you and value you.
Personally I have not found project management software any use at all, software projects being far too chaotic (in the mathematical sense of being unpredictable due to complex interactions) to be planned. But in more operational work, scheduling tools are indeed very useful.
Re:Give estimates (Score:3, Interesting)
Which indicates, sorry to pick on you, that you don't have a defined process. This is part of the saying "yes" and meaning "no" art, having a process ensures that people know that A is followed by B. If your project is chaotic and not properly managed it is easier to place additional demands as the amo
Re:Give estimates (Score:4, Interesting)
All requests go through him. Noone else. He should then get a clear picture of what they're asking, and then come to you to help you estimate the assignment.
If there is a "no", you should always give elaborate reason as to why (i.e. make the customer realize what a bad idea it is).
It's a good thing to do the estimate anyway, in case the customer just says, "I don't care, do it anyway!"...
The biggest mistake is to talk directly to the people that do the assignments. A lot of those people don't know how to say no, or have the customer realize that it isn't a great idea.
I've worked in such enviroments for at least 6 years. I was one of those who had a hard time saying no. After I got kids, it got a lot easier
Re:Give estimates (Score:4, Insightful)
If the demand really is absurd, you have grounds to take the employer to court should he fire you. Obvious example: asking you to do something illegal. Your contract should state something about how much overtime you may be expected to work; eg "in emergencies", but if it's a permanent emergency, that can't be reasonable.
I once worked for a complete asshole who piled on the work to an absurd extent. He would call me a couple of times a week to tell me to start immediately on some new project that would take a few weeks' work. When I pointed out that I could only do so by dropping the last thing he had told me to do, he just shouted at me. I finally quit when my salary was months late and sued him for severance. Since then, he's had several replacements bu none lasted moe than a few months. So the relevance to this is that sometimes you can never win, no matter how hard you work. Just document what you do in case it comes to a dispute and they want to fire you for poor performance in not reaching impossible goals.
Leave that job (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leave that job (Score:3, Insightful)
Become a Bum in One Easy Step (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Become a Bum in One Easy Step (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leave that job (Score:5, Insightful)
Entry level jobs on the other hand are very scarce. I would not want to be a college grad right now.
Now amount of stability is going to save you from burnout. You have to be your best advocate of your interests, health, and safety. Employers often rely on you to let them know when enough is too much. Great employers never let things get that far. Places to leave are the ones that ignore your needs.
And I don't buy for a minute that the economy is that bad. Especially for network admins. Just pick up the want ads.
Re:Leave that job (Score:3, Interesting)
I won't lash out, I'll just assume you're ignorant. I've got 5 years of admin experience, and I've had a grand total of FOUR interviews in FIVE months. Still unemployed. If you know something I don't, please let me know, I'll be all over it.
Re:Leave that job (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad time to get into a bad job market? Yes, absolutely, although signs of recovery are around. For the first month or so, I only applied for jobs in my county (which, due to population distribution, effectively meant jobs within 30 miles of my parents' home, where I'm crashing on the computer room floor while I search for work). Things were tough. No calls, no interviews. Not many places even send form rejection notices anymore.
About that time, I decided to broaden my search to include all major job markets in Southern California. While I didn't really want to move, I didn't want to stay unemployed, either. As a result of that broadened search, I've had two interviews in the last three weeks. The second one, just last week, was a waste of my time. The company I interviewed with first made me an offer today, and I've accepted it. I start in two weeks, as soon as my boss gets back from vacation.
I have to move about 100 miles away, and I'm not getting the kind of money I would have seen in SoCal a few years ago, but I'm now employed and the money will get better down the line as the economy does.
In closing, to respond directly to the comment to which you replied, it's true that there are certainly ads out there for sysadmins and network engineers. The problem is the ratio of positions to those seeking positions. There are a lot of unemployed sysadmins, underemployed sysadmins, and poorly paid sysadmins out there who are all applying for those jobs. The competition is truly intense. In my entire life, I have (before this job search) only rarely failed to get an interview anytime I applied for a job, and was subsequently hired in almost every case. My overall success ratio was about 80%. I've never experienced anything like the current job market. Since mid-June I've applied for over 50 jobs and only had two calls. Granted, one of those two hired me, but the ratio of applications to calls was still terrible. That's more jobs (by far) than I've applied for in my entire life previously. I have a job now, but my success ratio is shot
Re:Leave that job (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, before you start worrying about saying "no" to clients, I would worry about saying "no" to your boss. Tell him or her that the conditions are intolerable, and if they won't do anything about it, maybe you should start refusing to work overtime. You'd be surprised how much leverage you can have, especially being the only one in your company that can do your job.
Here's another thing I've learned in my experience: they almost certainly have the money to pay for extra staff or whatever. They know it, and they don't want you to know it. They have it because they've made a practice out of overworking people and underpaying them, and if you press them, make them realize that's not a real possibility any longer, they'll bend. I routinely convince my supervisor into paying me nearly twice what I make per hour for an overtime shift. I get away with it because I'm valuable, because they have made it a practice of stretching staffing so thin that when one person calls in sick, they are absolutely desperate to fill the place, and because they realize that even with giving me bonus pay they're paying less than they would to bring in someone from an agency.
I would guess you actually have some similar power in your job, if for no other reason than the cost of bringing someone in to replace you is probably high. I'd recommend going to your boss and telling him or her, "These are the things that need to get done, and there is no possible way for me to do all of this alone. If I can't get another 1 or 2 staff members to help me, then these things simply will not get done."
Learning to say no to your boss is, in my experience, more important than learning to say no to the people you work with. If your boss were doing his or her job, you wouldn't need to tell clients no.
In the meantime though, I agree for the most part with what's been said, especially about requiring requests to go through office supervisors. That can help immensely.
Tell the truth!! (Score:5, Insightful)
What I would do... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you not learnt anything? (Score:4, Funny)
Cover your arse. (Score:5, Insightful)
Follow the list.
When someone asks for a low priority task, let them know that your boss has chosen your priorities and you have three months work before you will get to their task.
Try to help them to get their task done themselves quicker than you doing it.
Of course you will probably not be thanked for this. Peter
Re:Cover your arse. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, if you have multiple bosses asking for your time make them fight it out amongst themselfs (ie "Sorry Sam, but i'll be fully occupied with this project for John for the coming 2 weeks. Maybe you can talk to hime about it?"). It's majorly entertaining.
Additionaly i would like to address the Try to help them to get their task done themselves quicker than you doing it. thingie:
- Some people (for example, the "one specialist in a certain code base" or the "fireman of the company/department/group", or just anybody that's good at solving problems and is helpful) will be constantly interrupted and asked to "help me out with something for a moment" or "I can't get this to work, can you help me?" or "can you explain this to me?".
- Although this might at first make one feel good (you're "needed", you're "important"), it soon becomes to much and starts eating you your time like crazy - 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there, 20 minutes somewhere else soon adds up to a lot of time.
- Now, the problem with "helping others time" is that it's not in the budget. No mater how much usefull your helpfulnes is (and sometimes it's counter productive because it can breed a culture of dependency), you still have the same amount of project work to do (just less time to do it).
- That's were the "help others help themselfs" thing comes in. It's the single most efficient way i know of actually helping others while wasting the smallest possible amount of time.
The things to note with the "help others help themselfs" system:
- At first it will eat more of your time than just "doing it yourself". "Doing it yourself" will fix the problem faster but only this time around - the people you just helped don't actually learn anything from it and will come back again (and again and again) whenever the same or a similar problem pops-up (plus they won't be able to help others with that problem)
- Thus the gain in time for using the "help others help themselfs" system comes with recurring problems/questions/whatever.
- Also note that even when you teach people how to solve a problem, a lot of them still tend to come back to you to have you solve it for them. That's because for them it's easier and simpler to just get you to do it. To solve this, just make it harder to get your help for those you have already taught how to solve the problem (for example ask: "Have you tried what i told you last time?" "No" "Go and try it, if it doesn't work come back to me with it")
There is a lot more stuff about time management and avoiding overwork - however, this will help contain some of the "sneaky time wasting" stuff.
It depends on management (Score:5, Insightful)
At my last job I would often be asked at 5:20pm to do dumbshit stuff like get a full OS reinstall done on a half dozen machines in a department that needed an upgrade. No amount of explaining that this is not just an extra half hours work would mean a thing to those above me. If it were a one off I'd be fine with it, but from day one my job consisted of staying back insane amounts of time to get these things done, when the people who used the machines had set hours that never varied. No overtime either.
I ended up quitting, and while you might not consider that an option, if it comes down to working yourself dry and being used/abused then it's an option. Get on management until they relent, to get another IT person if you need. If you don't do it now changing later is all the harder. Hell, you're new at this job - do you know if the last person quit because of insane expectations like this?
Re:It depends on management (Score:4, Informative)
If the root problem is that your line manager has ridiculous expectations (or hasn't the guts / seniority to stand up to unreasonable clients), you could take two approaches. You could escalate the workload issue up the management chain, or to your HR dept (as a health and safety issue). This risks getting you into your line manager's bad books.
The other approach is to exert pushback against your manager's unreasonable expectations.
-
Get into the habit of giving your
boss written estimates of how long it will take
to do things, and keep a log of the actual time taken. If your boss knows you are doing this, he may think twice about overworking you.
- If your boss sets you unreasonable deadlines, don't be afraid to miss them.
-
When your boss demands that you work excessive hours, don't. He cannot FORCE you to do this. Indeed, the chances are that he won't be in the office when you be leaving
... so leave earlier. If he asks why, tell him the truth; i.e. that you were too tired to work effectively.
-
If you are overtired or stressed out because of overwork, take a sick day. If you can get a doctors certificate that says "work related stress" or "exhaustion", even better.
If your boss unreasonably threatens to sack you for not working hard enough, don't walk, or threaten to walk. Instead, bide your time while quietly start looking for a better job. Remember, if your boss actually sacks you, he / his business will take a big hit in a number of areas; time / money to recruit a new person, loss of productivity, loss of morale, etc. If he has half a brain, he will know this.Re:It depends on management (Score:4, Funny)
why didn't you simply say no first?
I used to be in your position... so I started to be out of there at 5:00 sharp, when asked at the last second to do something I simply would say "no" and I'll get to it in the AM.
most employers want to see how hard they can whore you.
I think you're approaching your job wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if you drop that into the guise of any client-oriented job - be it law, medicine, IT, or even a lowly customer service job - satisfying customers is not your primary and sole responsibility. You have to balance each client's interests against those of the company, other clients, and the priorities of your boss.
If a client is expecting too much, your mission is not to do everything they say - that's a great way to throw your priorities out of order. You're letting them detract from your other responsibilities. If you don't feel right telling them that they're not your only client, then apologize, tell them that you have other duties as well, and refer them to your boss. Let him deal with it. That's why he makes more than you do.
Really - I can't stress this enough. Keep your boss up-to-date on what you're doing, and let him guide your priorities. If anything or anyone is straining those priorities, let him deal with it.
It's really that simple.
- David Stein
Re:I think you're approaching your job wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the absolute truth. I'm the sole Network/Network Security person for a company of about 1000 associates, spread across four sites in North America. Production down emergencies come first, but after that everything is prioritized.
I keep a list of every outstanding task I have, and regularly ask my supervisor to look at the list to see if priorities need to be changed. That way, when people come to me with what they consider to be emergencies, I can decide where I think it should go on my list. If they find that unacceptable, they can talk to my supervisor.
I think it also helps to explain risks when I push back on requests. When poor planning results in someone wanting a network change during the day, I explain to them that if they change they request doesn't work, it could affect all 1000 people in the company and ask if it is really that important. Anything that is actually that important usually gets support from my supervisor, his supervisor, etc.
Trying to manage people's expectations will also help. If people know that task X takes Y days, it helps them plan and also gives you better ground to stand on when you have to push back. One of the best things I did was to put in place a policy that non-emergency changes would only occur Wednesday and Sunday nights. It fits my schedule and forces people to plan.
A good phrase is, "Poor planning on your part does not constitue an emergency on mine." If you can figure out a nice way to say that, let me know.
Re:I think you're approaching your job wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you make sure that everything you are given is allocated a priority, though, then you'll be getting well ahead in the game. The key thing is to define in black and white what those priorities mean
Once you have agreement on a set of PUBLISHED priority definitions, almost nobody will argue with you when you tell them that their request will be performed AFTER some other request. What's more, if they complain you can simply direct them to your manager for an exception (raise the priority based on an ad-hoc decision).
For example:
Critical = More than one employee/system unable to perform their primary business tasks. No workaround is available.
Very High = One employee/system is unable to perform their primary business tasks; OR More than one employee/system unable to perform their primary business tasks but a workaround is available.
High = One employee/system is unable to perform their primary business tasks but a workaround is available; OR More than one employee/system unable to perform their day-to-day business tasks and no workaround is available.
Medium = Employees or systems are unable to perform their day-to-day business tasks.
etc.
Where I work (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, your manager is supposed to, well, manage. And if not him/her, then a project manager of some sort. Any decent sized corp I've worked for had one of those. If you're getting snowballed with lots of work, then at least those above will be aware of it, and more can be done to manage your time.
I know. (Score:5, Funny)
It was called Fight Club, I think.
Document! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm reminded why I bill hourly now.
NEVER SAY NO (Score:5, Interesting)
The right way is to propose and alternative.
Scenario 2
PHB says - "I want X done asap".
overworked IT engineer - "No problem, which one of A,B,C,D, .... W would you like me to hold off on while I do X ?"
PHB ... goes away and does not come back until it's more important that A...W
Scenario 2
Customer - "I have this way out idea that will really be cool to do !"
Overworked engineer saya - "Fantastic, you know, we have a procedure for new projects, go fill in the form and we'll prioritize it".
Customer goes away and forgets the crazy idea.
Most of the ways to deal with anyone it to give them your problem. If you do this then you filter most of the nonsense. The golden rule is to never say no but to "Prioritize"! No-one will ever complain that you don't do your job if you are "prioritizing!".
Itemize and timeline (Score:5, Insightful)
Make a list of all the existing items. Put them into some form of project timeline (Mr Project, MS Project). Show the dependencies, requirements, funding estimates and man-hour estimates.
Make management assign priorities to tasks. I don't mean broad categories like "high" and "low", but actual numerical order. No equal priorities.
Generate a nice GANTT chart that shows you'll finish sometime around 2015, if and only if no new projects crop up.
You need nice pretty charts and graphs with lots of primary colors and some nice page-transition effects to catch the attention of most management types.
Re:Itemize and timeline (Score:3, Insightful)
They do appreciate the pretty pictures though.
policies? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also -- consider talking to people in each of those groups you outlined earlier. Maybe a couple of developers could be roped in to screening questions from their fellow developers before passing them up to you. It sounds like you're with an IT heavy company - the individual user groups can probably take some responsibility for their own actions.
Implement LDAP or AD and give a user from each group power to manage users within that group. That way you don't get called for password changes etc.
There's lots of things that you could work on to take load off of you. People do need to understand that you can't do everything. If you can get a work priority policy past the boss, at least you can start keeping track of the piles and whe a user says "why isn't X done" you say -- management says it's not a priority so it will be done when P D and Q are finished. ("when will that be" -- "6 months to a year") The users will go to their bosses and ask about the policy -- either the policy will get changed by your management, or they'll stick to it and back you on following it.
With Apologies to Abbott and Costello (Score:3, Interesting)
'Why is that Lou?'
'I just heard an IT guy say he's not available for overtime.'
(Okay, to avoid downmodding, it was originally 'I think the war is over (wwii)' 'why' 'I just heard the woman next door talking back to her maid'. The idea was that if someone gave a maid a bunch of shit, she could go be a Rosy the Riveter. Sorry, google no help. Go find some old time radio mp3s. Or tapes. Or CDs.)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I see this kind of problem in general (Score:3, Interesting)
What I mean is my friends will ask me to fix their computer or install a new hard drive but they would never think of asking their lawyer friends to write them a contract. What's up with that?
I have a policy with all my friends:
Windows Work: Pay my consulting rate, with travel time.
FreeBSD Desktop Work: Free.
I can install FreeBSD, with openoffice in under 30 minutes, and I rarely have to visit the computer again, and if there is a problem, remote diagnosis is quite easy.
Windows has to be installed beh
Re:I see this kind of problem in general (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple: Lawyers, Plumbers, and Car mechanics are viewed as professionals. They charge an exorbinant rate for fixing things. In business and at school IT is freely given out like candy. When folks aren't used to paying for something, they assume that it in fact costs nothing.
It also doesn't help that we (myself included) are often all to eager to volunteer our help. If we as an industry were populated by cynical and legalistic mercinaries we wouldn't have these problems.
Saying no comes with saying yes at the wrong times (Score:5, Interesting)
I've recently become development manager for one of our company's products. As such, it has taken a while to find my feet, both when interacting with sales & consulting internally, and when interacting with customers. I certainly erred on the side of saying yes too often, because I wasn't sure about saying no.
Not anymore. For me, it took mistakes, stress, and all sorts of complaints directed at myself or the company, whether or not it was my responsibility. It is this realisation that sometimes, I need to say no. People do get pissed off at you when you say no. But your job isn't to please people, it's to get a product out the door (well, for me it is, anyway).
So, you learn to say no when from the experience of getting a yes thrown back in your face.
This is a team skill (Score:3, Insightful)
The only good way I've ever found to do this is as a team. You have to know that your teammates and team leader will back you up. Your manager is not part of this as the request may come from them but hopefully they'll learn to trust your 'no' statements and start backing you up on these too.
If you are on your own then it's more difficult but generally that requires showing the requesting party why you are saying no. This may include asking them to seek approval from someone else to drop what you are doing, sign off on the risk, etc.
And if you are a contractor or similar then you need to supply your reasons and if they still insist then do what they want after making sure they are fully aware of the consequences (and you have a written communication to them including your objections).
take the burden away from yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are in the position of power, then you should have enough power to make a decision without fear. If you are shaking in your boots, then shift the burden to the client by letting the client prioritize things for you. Obviously this is complicated if you have more than one client. Then you'd have to get them all in a room and have them talk it out.
The rule of thumb for power is that power should match your responsibility. That means, if you are, say, responsible for cleaning the floor, then you must be empowered to move things off the floor, to access cleaning supplies and so on. If you are a manager and it is your job to prioritize items and yet you are not empowered to say "NO", then something is terribly wrong, and perhaps, your project is going down the tubes anyway, and you should look for another job. Alternatively, you can just shut up and sort of roll with the punches and hope that clients will drown in the endless bureaucracy (let the thing that's holding you down hold your clients down as well) and eventually run out of steam. It really depends on the environment you work in.
Re:take the burden away from yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
I've made best experience with this technique. Whoever asks me to do anything (usually this is a small number (~5) of different people) I ask back for the priority of the job.
If there's 50 tasks I'm pesting them for 50 different priorities, not just 3. Everybody understands that I can't do more than one thing at a time, everybody seems thankful that they can set priorities and don't rely on my priorities.
From time to time (if I believe something doesn't fit or someone misuses this power) I check back with my boss, but usually this is not necessary.
Another hint would be: Don't keep backlogs. Accept work for a month, not more. Nobody (especially not you) is happy to see that a task will be performed in a year. (and when the year is over it will be another year, because so many new tasks came up). When the month is over, get more work. Some recommended reading on this topic comes from xprogramming.com: http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/PetitionTheKing. htm [xprogramming.com]
Good Luck.Olaf
Keeping on task (Score:5, Insightful)
The only diplomatic way I could find around this was in a prioritization scheme based on adverse impact. For instance, network issues supersede server issues, server issues supersede workstation issues, workstation issues supersede printer jams.
My initial problem was in trusting my clients to be understanding enough to "get it". To my surprise, when I laid it out, they were amazingly receptive, as most of them knew when it was their turn to have a network or server problem, they'd be at the top of the list.
I'm not sure how well that will play out in a corporate environment, but like my customers, your users may be more understanding than you are willing to give them credit for. You are one IT person. Everyone in the company can count to 1, I'm almost sure. They're also keenly aware of how out-of-whack the user/nerd ratio is. Conservative (read:CHEAP) companies will let it get to 70:1, users:nerd. Good companies will go 40:1. Exceptional companies will go 20:1.
I don't envy you your job, you've got to focus on efficiency. Good luck to you, it'll probably be either highly rewarding or we'll all see you on the 6 o'clock news pinning down your coworkers with an assault rifle. Let's hope for the former.
Say Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't say no, say yes, and explain how long it will take (3 months) and when you can get started (in 6 months). Of course you must be very polite and empathise with them. Tell them that you understand how annoying their current problem might be.
Write a list of jobs, prioritise them, and then stick to the damn thing like superglue. If anyone has a request, listen to them, write it done, forward it onto your boss. Or alternatively if your boss is useless, stick the item at the bottom of the list. (my boss was so useless I ended up writing a small web-app to do this for me, and then for other people, and then for other people in different projects). But most importantly if you stick to your prioritised tasks you'll actually get some work done instead of constantly task switching, which wastes everybodies time.
Alternatively, if the request is just stupid, don't say "No, that's dumb", say "Maybe we could also (instead) do this, which would result in also having these positives, on top of what you've already said.". Diplomacy is the key!
Another important thing is to not let these users prioritise your tasks. They will all end up "super high" or something equally useless. Just use your own numbering scale from 1-10.
The alternative is to piss off all of your users, say yes to everything, look like you never get anything done, stress yourself into a heart attack by 40, write crappy buggy code and to hate your job. It's your choice.
Welcome to the real world!
Paper Trail (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the comments in this thread are entirely accurate. Do not say no, but rather, document exactly what tasks you're doing, ask your manager to prioritize, and have customers go through him/her to get to you.
If your manager is unreasonable, you will have to do the prioritization yourself. Most important, though, is that you very clearly document the time estimated and actual hours spent on fulfilling a task.
What I have also found to be extremely useful (consultant, yeah yeah...) is, before starting a task, outline the actual task deliverables. When finished, do a quick writeup on what you did, who it was for, how long it took, etc. Doesn't have to be long, just look reasonably nice
This takes a bit of getting used to and initially may seem like a waste of half an hour per task, but I have yet to speak to anyone in any level of management who didn't appreciate that sort of thing. It gives them concrete proof of what you're doing, it gives you a paper trail to fall back on when people claim you don't have enough to do, and it makes your boss look good, because they have something tangible in their hands to present to their management.
Also, though I know it's not entirely relevant, it helps me to occasionally look at Stokely's Golden Rules of Consulting [stokely.com]. It's more geared towards independent contractors, but contains some very wise principles.
Whatever happens, don't get frustrated. I guarantee you, eventually your customers will begin to understand that everyone and their mom wants you to do things for them, and will learn to stand in line. And my experience has been that when something is truly truly earthshatteringly urgent, they become even more appreciative if you can bend the rules a bit. That's how we kept a fairly extensive bar stocked during my last operations role
A wise man once told me... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have lived by that ever since. I am a supervisor that is responsible for not only my time but the time of others. I never say no, I just let people know, without whinning, where there project stands... and what possible delays there may be. I have neen known to tell someone that I was planning to shelve their job for a week, and if they want they can give me materials now, or wait until I am ready to start. I usually let people know that I am just trying to be honest with them and not lend them false hope.
In my small firm I keep my schedule posted as well as the tasks of my subordinates (I don't put their exact shedules... can of worms I won't open). Most of the time people can tell where on the totem pole their project falls and will often hold the job themselves seeing that something more important is in front of them. Ultimatly communication is the key, not bitching. If people see things getting done and you working hard and working snart, they will rarely (I won't say never) get upset at how long something is taking.
Don't say no (Score:5, Interesting)
I have the answer and used it, it works. (Score:5, Insightful)
On any product they can't have all three. Example: If they want it quick (time) and the want it cheap (money), it will be lacking in quantity. Or If they want it cheap, and they want qulity, the delivery time will be long.
Saying "No" is not always the answer. But if you explain how their request will affect the one of the three elements (time, money, quality) they will either:
A) Give you more money.
B) Give you more time.
C) Expect less at delivery(cut-corners)
D) Withdraw their request.
And everyone wins.
Prioritize! (Score:3, Insightful)
Once that is resolved, you should move on towards the next immediate problem that affects the most users. Maybe it's upgrading/fixing the server(s). You'll probably have to upgrade hardware or install new patches to keep the developers happily developing on a fast machine while the administrative staff can wait for the MS Office update, etc...
Good luck.
Peopleware is a good place to start (Score:5, Informative)
You probably already understand one of its key points (or will very soon): it's not sustainable for you or anyone else to work more than about 40 hours, week in, week out, without turning crispy. Work is different from time in front of keyboard or slumped in your chair. You can rack up a lot of hours north of 40/week, but in the long run will have almost nothing to show for them. Additionally, the book will tell you how to say no, as you requested.
One more thing. If you are supporting 100 people, then your days are unquestionably one series of interruptions crashing into each other. There's strong practical advice here about how to minimize interruptions, and work toward having an environment in which you can actually get something done without having to use "hiding" tricks. One of the stories in the book is about a developer who was so bugged by interruptions in his cubicle that he took to working in a toilet in the men's room for an hour at a time. I hope you aren't near that point yet.
Here's the book at Amazon: [amazon.com] but you can get at the library, and probably faster.
Keep a visible task list (Score:5, Insightful)
Management's priorities are all over the map, and priorities can change every hour. This makes life incredibly difficult for us.
Our solution was to grab a big-ass whiteboard (you know, 4 feet tall, and 16-feet wide) and write down all of our tasks. No real detail... just enough to indicate what the task is. We mark which task we're currently working on. Whenever management comes by to give us more work, we take them to the whiteboard, write down the task(s), and insist they prioritize what's on there.
The amount of incoming work was enough to keep four people busy. We spent 2 hours daily discussing priorities with management. All tasks were important enough to keep on the board, and our Ops Manager maintained the priority list.
Then one day, the whiteboard filled up.
Management got the hint when we insisted on a second whiteboard. Instead of providing us with a second whiteboard, there's now whitespace available on the first board.
Just keep a list of tasks at hand, and make sure your manager knows what you've got on your plate. If you're given a new task, insist that he looks over your current list and assigns some priority.
Actually say the word No. (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory Simpsons Quote (Score:3, Funny)
Yes-men: Oh, yes, sure, etc.
Smithers: Right on, sir.
Change and incident managment (Score:3, Informative)
make up a system which includes procedures for change managment and incident managment. Everytime someone asks for something, ask them wether it is an incident or a change (or decide yourself), if its an incident (in which case you have break/fix situation), you know its a valid/urgent request and you can work on it. If its a change, you put it into a change managment system, together with the rest of the work you already have. Make this work visible (give out ticket numbers and such), so next time they want an update, you can refer them to your change managment webpage and they can see which project(s) are still to be fixed before theirs is started. This way, you dont come off as a sluggish worker AND you keep your customer happy.
ITSM, love it or hate it, but it sure is usefull.
Build A Rep So That They Listen... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, this course of action can also have the opposite effect if done wrong... if you meekly take on superhuman workloads without a whimper you might establish yourself as a doormat and then you're never gonna be able to say "no". So you need to stay very assertive and communicative (not combatitive!) during the whole process- you're willing to bust ass for the company, but you're not a doormat either.
Also, don't just say "no"... have REASONS for what you've said, as well as alternate solutions. If you offer constructive solutions they will respect that and even if they disagree they'll see you're trying to work WITH them and not AGAINST them.
Of course, if your bosses are just especially cruel, exploitative, and/or clueless they might never have the sense to hear the word "no". But... they're just out to make money. They're willing to listen to almost anything that will make them money. You have to convince them that the occaisional "no" is necessary, because the alternative is often a burned and angry client whose unrealistic deadlines you agreed to meet, but failed. Burned and angry clients don't stick around very long, unless it's to file lawsuits.
Status queue (Score:3, Interesting)
Somebody puts in a request? Great! Post it on your web-thingy, and notify your boss to assign priorities for the request(s).
Then, when user NNN sees their priority bumped to position #37 (ETA==never) they can take it up with your boss... while you just appear to be clean, professional, and attentive.
This is the kind of thing you could hack together with Linux/Apache/PHP/Perl in a matter of a few hours, if you really are any good.
Heck, put in a submission form so that you don't even need to type it in!
Very few things can't be done ... (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a number of things that are key
1) agree with senior management on broad priorities
2) draw up a list of what needs to be done
3) re-order the list in terms of the agreed priorities
4) present the prioritised list to management, and have them agree to the priority
5) Give an honest indication of how far down the list you'll be able to get
Go off and do stuff, and report progress on the list and re-prioritise the list say once a week, with their input.
IF they are half way decent as a manager, they will rapidly understand to either accept the level of capability they have, OR accept the need to increase that level of capability to meet their performance expectations. If they can't arrive at conclusions similar to these, in general you should be looking to work elsewhere.
If they want X to be done, explain what is really needed to achieve X. If some or all of the pre-requisites, give a honest estimate of how that will impact their timelines.
Oh - and plan on, and only commit to, 35-40 hours of real work per week per person, otherwise you'll burn people out, AND have no spare capacity to surge to meet the occasional urgent deadlines.
Another thing that can help, is to help filter the crap out, by getting agreement from management for allocation of resources to issues.
No system is perfect, but if you can demonstrate an understanding of the businesses needs and priorities, and be up front, but constructive, about the implications of meeting those, you can often say no without really saying no.
Underpromise, Overdeliver (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the day I tend to forget what I just spent 12 hours doing, so write everything down as you go along, and mail this to your manager at the end of the week, so they are aware just how busy you are.
BUT - my main area of expertise is DEFINITELY the route of underpromise and overdeliver. This is a technique for making yourself look more efficient than you really are. So - a user asks you to come and troubleshoot - say a missing share they used to have set up on their workstation. You know you can get round to them in 1 hour. Tell the user you will definitely come to see them in 2 hours time. Turn up in 3 hours and the users unhappy. Turn up in 2 hours and you've met expectations. Turn up in ONE hour, and hey - you're an hour early - RESULT! The user is v pleased that he is important enough for you to see quickly! User is happy. Now you knew all along you'd be one hour... but you've managed the perception of the user effectively, and he's a lot happier because, at the end of the day, you've psychologically out-manoeuvred him
Couple more things - when you helldesk phone rings, smile when you answer. You can hear it in your voice, and you will come across as a happy + confident employee, even if you're the opposite. This gives people confidance in your abilities, and they will enjoy dealing with you - and this costs you no time or effort. The more highly people think of you, the better your life will be.
Remember people. This is easy for you - I work with 5000 people, you only have 100. Bear in mind that at the end of the day, everyone wants to be adored *no, really they do!*, so you can use this to your advantage in a smaller way - treat users nicely, ie: as if you like them, and they will generally like you back. People who like you generally will let you get away with more... how much more quickly would you forgive your best mate letting you down, compared to a stranger?
I know none of these are super-practical tips, but you've already had tons of them - I promise they'll all make your job more enjoyable!
Good Luck.
There is no "No" in the workplace. (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, there is the current list of your tasks, with a timeline and priorities. If your management comes with new projects, have them look at that schedule and ask them to reorder priorities and timelines, if necessary. That will give them an idea of what the new project will cost them in terms of delay of other projects, messed dependencies and other consequences.
For example, there is the simple question of money. If an external customer comes to you with a new project or a new idea that will mess up the current project, show them the consequences of their doing, and attach a price to this. "Your new idea will fit into the current project here, here and here. It will use up to x mandays of work, costing $$$ each, and will delay the first shipment of the deliverables by y days. Also, the new things will need adjustments to the project documentation, the handbooks, the testing procedures, costing another $$$. That comes down to a total of $$$$$$ for you at this point in time. Another alternative would be a separate project adding your features to the finished product. That might be slightly cheaper because of
The basic idea behind all these techniques is to make the internal structure of your projects and your schedule as transparent as necessary for the person asking you. It enables them to understand that their idea may be good (it probably even is), but that it is not suitable at this point in time. It also makes transparent for them the ressources they allocate and probably waste, if they insist on it now.
Which is much more effective as a plain "no" anyway.
Kristian
Never say "No" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going to echo what others have said, and that is essentially, communicate, communicate, and communicate some more. Don't whine, just explain the facts:
Fact 1. You are a human being, and you have a limited amount of time to accomplish tasks, just as any other human being does.
Fact 2. When you have responsibilities, those responsibilities take time. Additional responsibilities will require more time.
Fact 3. If tasks are expected to be accomplished at a higher rate of speed, management must either allocate more resources to accomplish those tasks, or must properly prioritize.
Fact 4. You should not be expected to work 70 hour weeks to keep up with the basic demands of your organization. This, it seems to me, is the most important one in the situation described- it points to a failure on the part of the organization to recognize that in order to accomplish their goals, they must be willing to allocate the proper resources to those goals.
Speak to your boss/manager, and explain the situtaion in simple, concrete terms. Don't be afraid to say "It is not reasonable to expect a single FTE to accomplish the tasks allocated." Document what you're doing, explain why (in simple terms) it takes the amount of time it does to do things, and be prepared to explain your reasoning. You are the subject matter expert, not management.
What it comes down to is that when the rubber meets the road, an organization that wishes to have tasks accomplished in a timely manner by any division, IT or not, must be prepared to support that goal with resources. If the organization cannot or will not provide those resources, you MUST explain (politely) that it is not possible to accomplish what is expected in the timeframe alloted.
I realize that not everyone is in the position to say "give me the resources I need or find someone else to tell you what you want to hear", but the alternative is to eventually fail; in a case where you simply cannot make management see the facts, it would be prudent to seek employment elsewhere if possible.
I speak from experience here- I tried to be Superman and Scotty all in one to a number of organizations. I suceeded for a while, but only by totally destroying anything I had resembling a life outside of work, and that led to long-term health problems, both physical and emotional.
Trust me, you'll burn out long before anyone takes any notice of your plight, unless you make it perfectly clear what you bring to the table, and what you do not- 70 hour work weeks shouldn't be in that package.
As a contractor, charge more (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously! When clients have to feel their pocketbook getting lighter, they stop asking for piddling things and keep requests to important items.
The 90% rule (Score:4, Insightful)
Wild guess... you're a perfectionist?
Me too.
It's a problem.
Seriously, aiming for perfection is a genuine personality problem in a work environment. Why? Because perfectionists can never achieve their goal but they'll spend twice as long as everyone else trying.
Here's the solution, tried and tested.
Follow the 90% rule.
Know exactly what you instinctively want to do to complete any task, and then aim for 90% of it.
Do this once.
Then ask yourself, honestly, have I really done a bad job here? The answer will be no, you've done a job that is the same as you'd have achieved if you'd aimed for perfection. But it took you half the time.
Perfectionists waste so much time aiming for that extra 10% and they never achieve it because it's a form of psychological self-punishment.
Get one thing absolutely clear in your mind -- you are NOT aiming to cut corners or be lazy. You're going to achieve exactly what you would normally, you're just freeing yourself from that nagging burden of an impossible goal.
Finally, consider this...
When you wonder about "how to say no" to people, are you worried about letting them down or letting yourself down?
See what I mean?
In a word - Negotiate (Score:4, Informative)
If it's a client, you have to politely inform them that while you may not be able to get the job done for the time they are requesting, you can certainly aim for 'x time' - never mention other projects that you are working on for a client as you always want them to get the impression that they are the most important.
Never say No to a client - if you no you can't do it, then outsource it.
If it's your boss, you have to negotiate more heavily, as the boss is certain to 'pull rank' to get his/her way. Again, you need to request more time, however at this point you can indicate all the other project that you are working on and set a priority list
Ok boss, if this job is so urgent, I'm afraid I'm going to have to put X job on the back-burner to get it done.
Finally, if it's a marketing person who said to the client "Sure, we can get that done by next week Tuesday easy !", you have to hunt that marketing person down and kill them - after all, marketing types are a dozen a dime and really have little use except for blood-sport...
make it an application (Score:4, Interesting)
If my colleague wants something done I tell him to put it on the to-do list with a priority rating.
I then work top down. That way he knows what I have / haven't done and what he's going to delay by wanting new things.
Managers should manage. I let him choose which work I'm doing next.
And I can't stress enough how well that appraoch works in a bigger company. Bump requests up to your manager and let him choose which you do next. It reduces your stress because you aren't trying to juggle a bunch of peoples feelings and with luck, if you are overworked, they will do something about it because they can see the situation rather than people bitching about you never doing their tasks when they think that their tasks are the only ones you have outstanding.
Check out "Rapid Development". (Score:5, Informative)
There's a great book "Rapid Developemnt" by Steve McConnel, I recomment every developer/project manager to read it. I remember reading a good section on how to say 'No' in a professionl way.
He has a bunch of exerpts and articles here:
http://www.stevemcconnell.com/
What helps me is (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the guidelines that help me achieve my goals, and my boss' goals, without going nuts in the process.
I can't stress this one enough. ALL requests for work should come through your trouble ticket system. Mid and Long-term projects don't need this as they should *only* come from your immediate boss.
Having everything in writing allows you to keep track of who requested what and when. It also leaves a paper trail should the user/client claim you did not meet their request on time/to spec. Last but not least, it enables you to justify your time management.
I know this sounds like a verbal wank, but it's true. If a task is not important, don't prioritise it above those that are. Keep in mind that your priorities are not those of your boss, and your boss' opinion of your work is really all that matters as far as doing well goes.
To be happy and successful in your job, you need to meet the priorities of your boss. If there's something that needs doing and it's not your boss' priority, make it one. Do this by explaining what it is, why it needs to be done, the impact on the organisation/yourself/your department/whatever if it's not done, the urgency and why it's so urgent.
When you're working on very important tasks under ultratight deadline, put your phone on "do not disturb" and ignore email. This helps your concentration greatly and, bottom line, if it's important enough people will walk into your office to see you. This is doubly effective if you're trained your users to do everything via TTS or email; they'll be reluctant to ask you in person, knowing you usually tell them to repeat it all in an email. Thus they'll only come to you when it really is important.
Following the above point, your prioritised list of tasks is sacrosanct - stick to it! The *only* tasks you should even consider inserting into the priority list you and your boss have previously agreed on, are those that can be classed as "DoMeNowOrElse". Before you class something in this way, ask yourself "would i be willing to do major (>2hrs) overtime to get this done ASAP?" If they answer is yes (e.g. downed email server), then it's worthy of insertion into the priority list. Also keep in mind these insertions should always go above existing priorities - it'll help dissuade you from arbitarily adding tasks because someone other than your immediate manager says they're urgent.
Meet once a week with your boss and ensure your priority list is still relevant with his needs. He or she usually knows much more about whats going on and what's important at a strategic level, so while you may think disabling that ex-employee's account isn't more important than upgrading a mailserver, your boss may know different.
This may sound silly in a discussion about workload management, but it's core to everything you do as a sysadmin. Remember that the only time most people see what you do is when they come to you with a request. They dont have the vaguest clue what your job entails - the difficulty, the hours, the stress, none of it. All they'll remember is the grumpy way you dismissed them with a "no" and went back to working on your "DoMeNowOrElse" task. Which to them of course looks like you're just goofing off at your workstation. While this seems the easiest, I find this point by far the hardest to stick to.
And, last but not least, remember this phrase: "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part". But don't ever say that to your users unless you can figure a nicer way of putting it
Say no, lose your job (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a time when it was possible for us programmers to hide behind a project manager whenever the requests were unreasonable or just did not make common sense, but that is no more. When the mass layoffs started the first thing that happened was at least half of these project managers got the axe and many programmers got stuck in PM duties. This is why to many of us this job is turning us into politicians, because it is the only way to survive.
Of course, one could get high and mighty, but the only thing one would get out of this is a pink slip or a bad performance review (like it just happened to me).
The only possible escape is instead of just plain saying no, to deflect the issue with alternative approaches to the problem. What sounds better? "Can't be done.", or "This is not going to work because of
A test of your management (Score:3, Interesting)
You should have a line manager to whom you report. Yes, of course you provide a service to a zillion different departments, but there should be one person to whome you report. Possibly the guy who hired you. Or the guy who says you can't have any more budget. This is his problem.
If that guy is totally pointy-haired, then there is nothing you can do. Start looking for another job. Because even if you solve this problem, another will come along, and another, and another... Better to jump early that to drop out from exhaustion.
But assuming your boss is not totally pointy haired, then all you need to do is to dump the stuff on his desk. When people come and make the excessive demands, package the whole lot up, take it to him and say "this represents 200% of what I can possibly do - please choose the half you want me to do, and prioritise it, the tell the other half they cannot have what they want", It is his job, not yours to palacate the enraged user. There may be a few iterations, as different users use their different powewrs to escalate their requests (or drop them because they weren't that important, or there is another way to do them).
Obviously, your boss will try to get a bit more out of you - ask for 110% of that 200%. Don't give in to this. Make that 100% honest, then stick to it. If your boss fires you for an honest statement of what you can do, then he is too pointy haired to work for. And don't let him squeeze your estimates - if you say four days for a job, it is four days, not three. You are the techy, it is your job to make those estimates - and to get them more or less right. He is the manager, it is his job to use those estimates to get the best value for the company from your skills. Respect his skills - do the things he prioritises, not the ones you would like to do. But demand that he respect your skills and doesn't override your technical judgement.
To summarise: you need to learn to say no to only one person: your manager. If you cannot set up a decent relationship with him/her, the job has no long term prospects: head for the lifeboats fast. If you can set up such a relationship (and it is a core function of technical management to have such relationships), then you can simply pass the buck upwards.
Documents! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the difference between software engineering and hacking. They want a new feature? Fine, ask them for requirements and use cases. Hard copies. Signed. Put a positive spin on it by asking them they'd rather you did it right, or did it twice. Document everything, confirm every conversation by email, attach your schedule to every document, actually move your completion dates every time a piece of new work hits you, and never, ever tolerate the scam that you're only scheduled for (e.g.) 80% of your time, and you can fit in the extra work (along with holidays, training (hah!), sickness and meetings) into that other 20%. It's bullshit, and management need to be called out on it.
I got fired (Score:5, Interesting)
and I got fired... for "breach of ethics". apparently "pandering to a customer's silly whims and tantrums" is an article of ethics in that crowd.
Practical Applications (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, no one has the right for any reason to violate your emotional and mental boundaries. Given this information, any employer who would expect you, the only IT employee, to work miracles on a budget with 70+ hour work weeks would either be insane, satan, or taking advantage of you.
In any of these cases in it not right. I assume you are salary which means you work whatever they tell you too. They can fire you because they feel like it. And basically, you owe them for giving you a job in such difficult financial and job market times.
Therefore, here is a practical solution. Explain to your customers, clients, employer and co-workers that you are one person doing the job of several. You are more than happy to get to their requests (which I can assume are typically easy user account resets, PC checks, LAN crawls) but to please be patient. And if you must tell them "No, I cannot do that." Be sure to add, "No, I cannot do that right now. I have too much work to do. Perhaps we can revisit this at a later date."
Keep in mind you do not want to upset them. So yelling "NO!!! GO AWAY!!!" as the BOFH would, while quite humurous, and honestly quite theraputic, would probably get you fired. You want them to be considerate of your time and your work so please be considerate of theirs (and it sounds like you are, otherwise you wouldn't be so willing to do the work and find it so hard to say "No.")
I hope this helps.
Rivendahl
A few pointers (Score:4, Insightful)
B) Self-Service Rules. If you work with 40 developers, focus on providing resources so they can solve their own problems. Make sure things are documented and available so people can find things. Make it so users can self-install software and so on. Don't be a control freak. With programmers and sales/marketing departments it wont work.
C) Become a horse trader for budget. When someone's got something that needs done, and it requires an upgrade or new purchase THAT IS AN OPPORTUNITY to get another department to fund you. Let people buy priority with budget dollars. I've diverted funds from advertising or sales training to buy servers because I NEEDED ECOMMERCE ONLINE NEXT MONTH!
D) Don't be a no guy or a yes guy. Ask questions like "How will this help make your department more efficient?" , "Will this change enable us to increase capacity?", "Explain how this will help the bottom line?", "What alternatives have you considered... why did you settle on this decision?", "This will have impact on ______. Have you discussed the impact with ______ in ______?", "This looks like a really good idea - what drove you to consider doing this?" A lot of times people will talk themselves OUT OF DOING ANYTHING or put the project on the back burner.
E) Don't be heavy handed with end users. Don't ever say to anyone that they or what they do are not important! When you have to say no, just be honest: "Accounting is down right now, can I get to this later?" "Do you need access to something you don't have to fix the problem?" "I think this is a great idea, but before I'm comfortable signing off on it, I'd you to discuss the idea with _______ and ______." And finally, you can always say, "No, I can't do it."
Re:Real World?! (Score:3, Insightful)