Building The Net

This story might not be for everyone.

I often have trouble thinking of things to write about that will fit in to the “Everyone can benefit from” category. This little blog post is really aimed at IT folks and their families. It is an effort in explaining some of the strange thought processes we as IT people need to use in our jobs, and how they leak into our home and social lives sometimes.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

Everyone knows that when you look back on an event or problem, it’s usually easy to see what caused it to occur. And for most normal people, they will say things like, “Wow, the stars sure lined up for that one” or “Nobody would have ever guessed that that small thing would cause all that to happened”. But, folks in IT are reminded every day, that if those “stars” line up on their watch, something is going to hit the fan. And what’s even worse, some arm chair consultant will be hired to come in afterwords and will file a report that blames the IT department for not seeing this coming… As they old saying goes… “Welcome To My World…”

Imagining the worst, always.

So, what makes a good IT person? Well, besides dedication, knowledge, dependability and the ability to think clearly when everyone around them has lost it? An IT professional must always see the worst in things. What do I mean? Well, a normal person will blindly get on a cruise ship and enjoy their trip, while an IT person will spend the first night working out if there are really enough life boats for everyone. A normal person will gladly hop on an elevator with everyone else in their department, where an IT person will evaluate if someone from their department that knows how to bring up the backup generators will be outside the elevator if the power goes out in the building.

Why are we so negative? Well, it’s our job. We are looked upon to visualize the worst possible problems, and have actual plans in place to deal with them. Things like “Our entire data center in LA just collapsed in a giant pile of rubble! We need those servers back on line!” And, we magically put the “LA Data Center Total Loss” plan into effect.

But, let’s go back a second. What went into the planning? Well, we had to visualize the loss of all that equipment, then we had to figure out what our down time cost exposure was, then we came up with estimates for different outage recovery times. We then presented our plan to management, and once management evaluated all the costs, we then implemented all the things that needed to be done to make that plan a reality.

Contrast of thought processes.

So, does all this negative thinking effect our interaction with non IT types? You better believe it! How? Well, let’s say that an accountant just payed the office electric bill, but two days later, you see a disconnect letter that says that the payment is late, and the service will be disconnected in 3 weeks if they don’t receive payment. The accountant might just assume that the electric company hasn’t received the check, as it was only sent two days ago,  and leave it at that. You, the IT professional would begin to analyze this a bit deeper… What would happen if the power was shut off on that date… Let’s see, that date is a Friday… Does that mean that we couldn’t get the service restored till the following Monday? Will someone who can sign a check be available if they come to turn it off? No, all the check signers will be out of town that day.

See where this is going? This event actually took place. The IT person asked the accountant to follow up via phone to verify that the check was received. The accountant basically told the IT person not to worry about it. The IT person proceeded to tell the accountant that they were worried about it, and that they needed to make sure that the electric company got the check. The accountant told the IT person that they were nuts and to not worry about it. This quickly escalated to an argument.

Was the accountant right? was the IT person right? To the IT professional, it’s not a matter of being right or wrong, it’s acting on additional information in a logical manner. The conflict was caused because the accountant and the IT professional had a different concept of logical.

Off Duty? What’s that?

So, if you are married to someone in IT, I’m sure you have your story to tell… Like the time the pager went off at 3AM, and your mate headed out the door, not to be seen for 3 days… Or the time that they invited you to take a ride with them to the job site, promising that all they needed to do is reboot a system, only to be stuck in an office building being ignored for 9 hours, while your wonderful partner raced around trying to cool down a data closet, and recover systems that melted down in the heat of an AC failure. Or the time they installed that new alert system, that woke you both up 10 times a night until they worked out the bugs.

And I’m sure you have your stories to tell about being abandoned miles from home at some event that you both went to, when something went wrong somewhere that couldn’t be fixed remotely. Oh, and if you’re really lucky, you’ve gotten to answer the phone when all hell was breaking loose, and everyone wanted to know what was going on, but all you could tell them was “They’re working on it right now, but there is no ETA as of yet to when everything will be back up…”

Thanks Kim, for putting up with this IT professional.

— Stu