For those who works in a reasonably large office will know about the helpful guys running around fixing all your seemingly endless IT problems. Well, for those who knows me, I am one of them, a IT support engineer. They come in various versions, differing in technical strength and public relation skills. I come to know about this guy, who is definitely not cut to be in the industry, but didn't seem to get a hint of the term, "INCOMPETENCE" is, despite obvious signs everywhere pointing to it.
Almost everyday for the 3 months he was with us, I will receive calls for help from him. It wasn't the typical learning questions expected from a new man on the job. Till the end, it's still the same old layman questions. That's when I ponder why I was giving life support a IT support Engineer who was not under my charge and I do not know personally.
Let us take on a little journey on the horrors regarding this guy, which I will use the name "A" to protect his identity. Although keeping his identity secret is a serious disservice to the world, I have to respect his privacy and reputation in case I kana sued.
Here is how he scores in my Super Helpdesk Engineer grading system ...
"A" - Chinese male guy
Technical skill - 1/10 - Did not demonstrate understanding of area of work
IT Knowledge - 1/10 - Fairly less than a average office guy
Internal PR skill - 0/10 - Lost credibility very quickly due to obvious incompetence
External PR skill - 0/10 - Users unwilling to use his help, to the point of being "banned".
Some Damning Incidents
Notebook rollout
When he first came in, he was assigned to oversee two engineers on a notebook upgrading project. By the time I came into the picture, the dateline was already near. I wasn't so happy to see that it was moving slowly and generally done poorly. He didn't pushed the engineers hard enough. It didn't help when the notebook installation and procedure check list was badly done too, which wasn't his fault. The users weren't too thrill to get notebooks that couldn't perform what their replaced notebook can do, thus, many cases were logged to do the patching up for the months that followed.
I put an end to the nonsense and came up with a universal laptop and desktop checklist soon after, which my predecessor didn't bother to spend time on. The 1/2 page of checklist ballooned to 4 pages long. It will not take a genius to make a guess how much damage can 3.5 pages of incomplete instructions do.
Banning by at least 3 users within the first month
Feedback from users weren't great. I went down to the grounds after a month after the IT Assistant Manager asked me to. It didn't take too long before I received some terrible feedback from a VP and 2 other quite influential users. They didn't want A to touch their computers anymore for obvious reasons. This was in line of what the IT AM had told me about. Another ex-IT colleague also gave thumbs down to his overall performance. In order to keep things simple, he was permanently banned from the all VPs or important people there after.
Server down
To the IT infrastructure team, nothing else can be more crucial than a server outrage. Imagine to the horror to one of our administrator who found himself screaming in horror after he dispatched A to the server room in the morning to check out a non-responding server immediately. An hour later, the administrator found it strange that A didn't report in on the status. He made a call to A and was distraught to hear that A had decided to go down later in the afternoon instead. The boils down to two things : he didn't know what is call priority and he ignored an direct order.
Backup
After 3 months on the job, A still couldn't figure out the backup procedures and regime. Tapes were loaded wrongly, and sent to the wrong party. He still have difficulty operating the backup software and the tape libraries that I took less than a week to pick up. And all along, he was still reading the guide that I had created for the new users. Pfftttttt...
Remote access
Because of the large geographic area at the user's site, there is a constant need to use remote access software to ease our strain. By 3 months, I do expect him to know that the remote access software couldn't work with Windows firewall. He called me out of the blue for help at his new workplace. I was curious what could bug him so much so to call me, so I went on to try. After listening to him for a few seconds, I realised that he didn't turn off the Windows firewall, which he should know by heart now. I asked him if he had checked, and he replied that he did. Then on further questioning, I found that he turned off his firewall but not the user's firewall. Now that's lame.
Domino administrator
Again at his new workplace, he ran into problem creating new users in Lotus Notes Domino server and called me for help. For those who don't know, the Domino server is a email server which requires proper training and experience to manage. I was amazed to hear that he was allowed to administrate such a important IT function without either of the requirements. And guess what, he couldn't even create a new email user, a very basic function in Domino server. His description of the steps he took to create the user and the situation was so vague that it was summarised as "I don't know". That was a lost cause. So I bailed out and said I couldn't help him on this.
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He is really fortunate that he was not in my team. He would have been the first person that I will get rid of for total incompetence. So after 3 months, my customer let him go for the better good. He did make an attempt to come back to the job by applying for a position with my company. When I was asked for my recommendation, I gave my honest opinion and therefore, i wasn't surprise that he was not considered for the position later on. Phew.
[WARNING !!! SHAMELESS PLUG AHEAD !!!]
Come on, not every IT Support Engineer is as professional as I am, right ? Quick head hunt me for your well paying and yet relax job position now !
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