Common operational misconceptions

Fri Feb 17 19:26:44 UTC 2012

> > 3.	Troubleshooting skills are limited to knowing the number of the
> vendor's help desk.
> 
> There are no problems! Can't be. And if there are they hire external
> experts. BTDT. Those are well paid jobs.

I see that a lot and there is often an organizational reason for it.  If a tech says "I have a ticket open with the vendor" and provides the ticket and status updates on a regular basis, he's covered as far as the people higher up in the organization are concerned.  If the C(X)O wants to know what's going on, the manager can shift the focus to the vendor and say we are waiting for a fix from them.

A tech trying to troubleshoot it and fix it themselves is going to be hounded every five minutes for status updates and won't be able to get any work done because every five minutes (I kid you not, I have worked where that is a requirement) he has to pull his head out of what he is doing and answer a bunch of questions from the PHBs.  And you always get "how long is it going to be" and you want to say "10 minutes longer than it would have been if you hadn't interrupted me" but you bite your tongue.