Arguments against IT staff in open plan office

You havent actually worked in IT have you?

Oh right, is this where you tell me that you really are special little lambs who really do need insulating from the horrid world?

Need to use a ticketing system, our current open jobs sits around 20, some longer, some shorter, but not projects generally as they are outside of that

Some jobs sit in there for weeks due to the nature of them, without a ticketing system those jobs would be forgotten and never completed

Sorry, IT you don’t have greater GDPR risk than HR, Finance, even Sales.

I’m struggling to think of anywhere I’ve worked where HR didn’t have their own office for confidentiality reasons. No-one seemed to think that was unusual or suggested they leave their desk every time there was a query, and they didn’t have a storeroom’s worth of hardware to put somewhere.

So yeah, this thread has actually become “10 reasons why we can’t be like every other office worker” By the staff who in reality are just like every other office worker,  but who really believe they can’t behave like every other office worker becasue; reasons that are special that unless you’ve been in IT you couldn’t possibly understand.

Uh huh.

Where’s the picture of sceptical house when you need it.

There are lots of roles where an open plan office is detrimental to work management. Not just (some) IT roles.

Of course, there are many roles where open plan is beneficial, preferable, more sociable, more collegiate, more productive… but assuming that applies to all scenarios would be odd. And then so would an attitude of… “it makes your job harder, suck it up”… assuming the aim is getting the work done.

without a ticketing system those jobs would be forgotten and never completed

Becasue you can’t work a calendar?

Seriously every reason/excuse you’re coming up with that you think makes you a special case, just sounds more and more like special pleading.

It’s making you sound more and more like an idiot.

You cannot run a corporate like it’s a corner shop. Any SME needs an IT ticketing system. A calendar for day-to-day calls is about as much use as a stone tablet and chisel.

It’s making you sound more and more like an idiot.

I am guessing they have a grudge against the IT support staff since for some odd reason they find themselves at the back of the queue when needing support. Perhaps one day they might connect that to their lovely attitude towards IT.

Becasue you can’t work a calendar?

How is putting things in a calendar really significantly different to putting things in a ticketing system?

I think anyone, no matter their role/department, going from working separately to open plan will bring up some apprehensions – I don’t think it will be as bad as what you think and you and your colleagues will work it out.
RM.

How is putting things in a calendar really significantly different to putting things in a ticketing system?

It would make the backlog review calls hilarious.
I am also not sure how we would mark its progress from design=>dev=>qa=>uat=>prod.
Maybe thats why an open plan office is needed so we could pass a paper calendar around.

I used to have two actual offices (closable doors rotting cycle kit under tables, the lot…) and a PA and everything (to do typing believe it or not…) Now I hot desk in open plan across two offices with home working, and with a bigger job and a much bigger team (albeit with a flatlining ‘career’). Our IT folks seem to cope okay too, sometimes working in direct daylight, and operate a ticketing system to manage direct demand. It’s just how folks work these days.

@Alan1977 I get where you are coming from. I used to be an IT bod in a similar role, in what was a smallish company. We had our own office, because when you’ve got multiple job on the go with PC/Server/Printers in bits, a 1 person cubicle doesn’t cut it, and booking out a meeting room so you can have enough space, every time you need extra space, then clear it all away, etc, was impractical. On top of that, a lot of what we did in IT was problem solving, and we’d be bouncing ideas off one another, finding solutions and working in a collaborative way that doesn’t function in an open plan environment.
I speak from experience, as the same thing regarding the office move, happened to us. In an open plan office it was difficult for us as a department and disruptive to other groups in the office. I hated it. Luckily I left 18 months after the move. All can say is, Good Luck!

It would make the backlog review calls hilarious.

No, I know. But it’s absurd to say that we only have ticketing systems as a crutch for IT and say you could just put things in a calendar instead… which effectively turns your calendar into a (crappy) ticketing system.

So you’re saying you are all special lambs that need special protection then? Is that right? That you can’t cope with the requests from your colleagues without them brandishing forth the mighty ticket stub hewn from the very living limb of the special icon on the desk top..?

Cool, cool, as long as we all understand…

Its the brew-making etiquette you’re worried about, isn’t it?

To be fair, it can be an absolute minefield

NickC the comments re ticketing system

its literally essential

the alternative would be setting up a sperate calendar myself and boss have access to, and every time there was an issue , manually filling the info in, or copy paste, add all the customer fields the like the user, hardware identifiers etc etc, it would take longer to populate the calander than complete the job.

so what would happen? my inbox would then be a backlog of tickets, that needed processing even before i could start fixing the issue

So what id do instead is get my developer head on for a few months and come up with automating everything through Outlook, and create… a ticketing system, which  someone already has done to a higher standard and with far more functionality

remember, I’m keeping track of 350+ pcs/phones/laptops.. 250 odd users and all their issues, I’m not simply helping Jim in accounts total up an excel column

A ticket system is essential

we used to not have one when we didn’t have a budget

people went without getting their issues sorted

Our IT dept has been forced to man an in-person helpdesk, which means we can now go down and get a new mouse / keyboard / power supply / batteries immediately rather than it going into a ticketing system for 48-72 hours and us having to resort to Cougars stone and chisel until the replacement shows up.

I wondered if their sartorial choices were the result of being limited to a basement somewhere for years, like a separate branch on a Darwinian evolutionary tree on some remote island that favored 90’s Nu-metal black shirts with flames on them, but now paired with a grey beard and Birkenstocks.

In the same way everyone in engineering eventually buys a 5-pack of light blue shirts from M&S.

Hands up, I don’t want to be in the main population at all, with HR directly behind me, my boss has already said to use his office as it will be empty 90% of the time, but surely there is some legitimate arguments against an IT person potentially dealing with sensitive information, or GDPR related info, for example me taking staff mobile numbers to help them with MFA etc etc? help me formulate a good argument that would stand up 🙂

As opposed to the proles in gen-pop doing the same conversation on the other end of the phone?

We’d all like our own office, but we’re not getting one 😂

What the IT bods fail to grasp is that, in every office, there is that one person who actually knows how to work Excel and has a screwdriver in their drawer.
This unsung hero gets constantly disturbed from their real, non IT related job and actually fields about 90% of the IT related issues in any organisation.

There is no ticketing system for this Idiot Filter. They are omnipresent

and has a screwdriver in their drawer.

And a knife??

How is putting things in a calendar really significantly different to putting things in a ticketing system?

Call priority. SLAs and automatic alerting when they’re being reached. Ticket progress updates. Call status. Previous call history. Asset tracking and trend analysis. Categorisation. Current call owner. Transfer of call ownership. Agent time utilisation. Control over who has visibility of what information (vital if you’re dealing with calls from outside the business, you don’t want customers seeing internal communication). Statistical analysis for Management reports. Etc etc.

How are you supposing the information gets into the calendar in the first place? With a ticket management system the onus is on the user, with a shared calendar the Tech would do nothing but log calls all day.

What happens when the business grows and there’s 1,000 users? 10,000? You’re going to have to pull out a braindead workaround hack that you’ve been heavily reliant on for years in order to implement it properly like you should have done in the first place. It is simply the wrong tool for the job and many correct ones exist so why wouldn’t you?

So you’re saying you are all special lambs that need special protection then? Is that right? That you can’t cope with the requests from your colleagues without them brandishing forth the mighty ticket stub hewn from the very living limb of the special icon on the desk top..?

Can you point on the doll where the IT Technician touched you?

its literally essential

I’m literally taking the piss to pass the time on a very boring Teams call.

Although this little number

remember, I’m keeping track of 350+ pcs/phones/laptops.. 250 odd users and all their issues, I’m not simply helping Jim in accounts total up an excel column

I wouldn’t reveal to the finance team if I were you, if you want your pay to be right…ever again. Jus’ saying

Call priority. SLAs and automatic alerting when they’re being reached…

Yes, I know. That wasn’t my point.

Can you point on the doll where the IT Technician touched you?

I lol’d

There does seem to be a lot of special pleading. There are an awful lot of very high powered people who manage in work in open plan environments I am sure you will manage.

Surely if you don’t want to be in with ‘Gen Pop’ you need to trick them into thinking you’ll make their new, pretty open plan office look terrible.

So if your current IT space is tidy, fill it with as many half assembled broken workstations, monitors, servers, printers, bundles of Misc cables and as big a pile of non-functional mice/keyboards as you can manage. Oh and Don’t forget to have lots of empty boxes half blocking a fire escape.

Tell them you need at least four “test benches” (Full sized desks with twin monitors, peripherals and lots of random unconnected cables)…

This is all just the opening gambit, you want them to find an alternative room to hide you and the unsightly crap they need to believe you come with. Without a reason to do so though they’ll just treat you like a normal employee and pop you next to chatty Doris from Accounts.

Our IT dept has been forced to man an in-person helpdesk, which means we can now go down and get a new mouse / keyboard / power supply / batteries immediately rather than it going into a ticketing system for 48-72 hours and us having to resort to Cougars stone and chisel until the replacement shows up.

This is another ‘economies of scale’ argument. If you can pop down to stores and request a new mouse I’d say that’s a sensible way of doing things, the red tape isn’t worth it. If they expect to pop down and request a new laptop then not so much.

I implemented exactly this system way back when I was in Support in the 1990s. Rather than requesting low-value items like mice on an individual basis which took days, we got a box of them out the warehouse, stuck it in a cupboard along with a box of Jiffy bags. A caller needs a new mouse, it was in Outgoing Post in minutes.

But it becomes less viable when the company grows and you need to keep stock of sundries at every branch, when that runs low they come back to Logistics for a bulk replacement order and that needs ticketing and tracking.

What the IT bods fail to grasp is that, in every office, there is that one person who actually knows how to work Excel and has a screwdriver in their drawer.

On the contrary. At a previous employer we were central IT for our site and a handful of remote offices. Each office had an IT Champion, our (volunteered) primary contact as someone who wasn’t completely useless and could be trusted to do things like read error messages. This was back in the days where things like remote desktop access weren’t commonplace. They were invaluable.

I’m literally taking the piss to pass the time on a very boring Teams call.

I did think it was out of character. Bastard.

If you are responsible for hardware, just make sure you explain how noisy diagnosis can be.

I guarantee if you use an electric screwdriver wherever possible you will be found somewhere away from everyone else. My cheapo bosch is particularly whiney and really grates on people.

Because you won’t find a legal reason to not be in an open plan space. My organisation has to conform to many security audits due to the sensitivity of the stuff we do. The infrastructure / desktop team are in the open plan with everyone else and it works fine. There is not a trail of people going to their desk throughout the day because of a rigid adherence to a ticketing system.

I’ve got a very noisy mechanical keyboard

a penchant for noisy music

unfortunately we don’t really have any local servers anymore.

I did think it was out of character. Bastard.

The “point at” comment was comic genius, I literally spat my coffee. 😂😂

you need to trick them into thinking you’ll make their new, pretty open plan office look terrible.

Trick?

This popped up on Facebook a little while back, it’s from my Time at the aforementioned 1990s Support role.

I commented, “I’m pretty sure that’s my old desk.” An old colleague replied, “It’s absolutely your desk. Your chair’s gone missing, it’s covered in bits of computer, and you’re not at it.”

(An aside for fellow Techs: Note the stockpile of IBM Model M’s under the drawers.)

I work in a global engineering organisation, offices in 50 countries. Current (UK) office is open plan, circa 200 desks (prob 100 people in.) 3 observations. HR do not have their own office.  The guy (and his team) who looks after nuclear security for UK operations does not have his own office. IT who administer systems capable of running nuclear defence work do not have their own office. All open plan. All this above board and in line with national security policy and best practice.

Your GPDR argument is screwed. 

HR directly behind you is the problem. Mainly because they will a) jibber jabber incessantly b) start accumulating evidence

and has a screwdriver in their drawer.

And a knife??

And a queue of perplexed colleagues who have no idea how they’re expected to eat apples and cheese without IT support

HR directly behind you is the problem. Mainly because they will a) jibber jabber incessantly b) start accumulating evidence

yeah, but it’s HR. They’ll lose the evidence or use it against the wrong person a couple of months late.

they will a) jibber jabber incessantly

Who’s your HR rep, Mr T?

And a queue of perplexed colleagues who have no idea how they’re expected to eat apples and cheese without IT support

🤣🤣🤣

Who’s your HR rep, Mr T?

I ain’t getting in no open-plan, fool!

And a queue of perplexed colleagues who have no idea how they’re expected to eat apples and cheese without IT support

We established on the other thread that only bona-fide Alpha males carry knives around in their daily life.

Can someone create the Venn diagram for IT support professionals and knife carriers? It’s looking like the international dialling prefix to me.