PC Helpdesks, Politics, Personal Agendas

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Here's an interesting story. I'd like to know if you think this guy got shafted.



This dude I knew had been working with PC's for over 10 years. When he graduated college he got screwed by the recession of 1991 and ended up doing PC support. Now in 1991 PC support meant you were responsible for anything that plugged into the wall so it was a back breaking into the lions den hard labor job. So during his storied career in PC support he went through DOS, Win3.11, then after switching a few jobs he got into the Win95 craze then on through to Win2000.



Well during the Win95-2000 era he had been at that place of work for five years. Then his IT dept went through a major turnover where one od hte support people quit and then two months later the manager quit. that left four people in the dept. Two more people who were hired right before the manager quit then started. A new manager was brought in from another dept. His title was Director.



Now it gets a little confusing. One of original four quit, then one of the two new hires quit. Then three new people were hired. So now there were eight people in the dept: One Director, three network admins and four helpdesk people.



A short time later, one of the helpdesk people quit. then two temps were brought in to do helpdesk. so now there were five helpdesk people.



So by this time this dude had been doing helpdesk for this IT dept for 6 years. He had been through 3 major OS migrations and was kind of on his way to getting into the network admin side of things.



And at his next review he was promoted from a PC End User Analyst to a Senior Network Engineer. He was happy.



Then, two weeks later, the Director called a meeting of the dept and he handed out an Org chart (which is found out later was ordered alphabetically....by FIRST NAME). And the dude found himself at the bottom of the list as a Desktop Support Specialist on the helpdesk side.

Not only that his new boss (supervisor) was one of the coworkers who had started the year before who apparantly had NO prior PC experience.



So did this dude get the shaft or what?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    If he just sat there supporting and did nothing to move himself higher up in the hierachy then he didn´t. A graduate doing helpdesk support for many years isn´t excatly saying "hey I´m hip and focused on my carriere" and would somehow make me think why he is still at the bottom in the food chain if I was manager.



    Add to that a number of other posssible reasons: He being a prick, ugly, lazy, etc.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Anders

    If he just sat there supporting and did nothing to move himself higher up in the hierachy then he didn´t. A graduate doing helpdesk support for many years isn´t excatly saying "hey I´m hip and focused on my carriere" and would somehow make me think why he is still at the bottom in the food chain if I was manager.



    Add to that a number of other posssible reasons: He being a prick, ugly, lazy, etc.




    i agree with anders, if you want to better yourself you have to help yourself and not wait for others to go " Hey! you have potential"



    During that era also, do-it yourself pc building was just comming out of the closet, so to speak, especially when 95 was about. So there was plenty of room for expanding your capabilities and capitilising on it.

    for someone who was a grad during the start of the PC boom and not gain in his career, Well i have no sympathy at all for him. he could of made something of himself if he tried but he didnt.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    o-maco-mac Posts: 777member
    Well here's the thing. Even though the dude was doing helpdesk he had already been doing net admin work and had a bunch of other major responsibilities in that dept.



    That title change he got was sort of in response to his request that his title be changed since he gained mroe responsibilities since he started working there.



    So he had been making something of himself and he was looking to move to a more responsible role.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    o-maco-mac Posts: 777member
    Oh and there's more....his previous manager had put in for promotions twice and they were denied. In fact, everyonein that deot were denied promotions while that previous manager was there.



    And, this dude was no slacker either. Apparantly, he got really good reviews up until that new 'supervisor' took over. And then when that new supervisor took over they started taking away his responsibilities without telling him why.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    ipeonipeon Posts: 1,122member
    It all comes down to ethics. Are you whiling to let others shove you around? Ethically, one wouldn't. If he found himself in an environment where it was managed by unethical managers he then had two options. 1) Do what he could to get rid of them, or 2) if that was near impossible, then go elsewhere. Ethics, ethics, ethics.



    Were the majority to do that, the world would be a better place, instead people put up with unethical behavior and soon find themselves acting the same way and even promoting it.
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