Arguments against IT staff in open plan office

FWIW, for some reason a few years ago I ended up managing a large ICT team. Everything that’s been said about a ticketing system/service desk is spot on. We had several customer facing roles including a handful of BRMs, but we eventually realised that the real techies/infrastructure/network guys were best left to do their thing.

I have no background or training in ICT but was asked to look after the service area – this meant I had to listen to the people actually doing the job.

Who’s time costs more

I commented again on this thread as this kind of comment reminds me that I’m glad I don’t work in such a toxic environment

Encouraging people to ask for help when they need it is a good thing.

Educating people how to ask for help in a manner beneficial to both parties is a good thing.

Or “Happy to sort that for you, I’ll just log a ticket first.”

You must be stuck for something to do.

Who’s time costs more?

If they’re so important that they can’t simply write down what they need, they’ll have a PA.

I missed one off my list earlier, accountability. “Why did you do this?” – “you asked me to.” – “No I didn’t!” If they didn’t log the ticket then you have zero evidence that you broke something because you were directly instructed to do so.

Sounds like you just need to catch up with the 21st century and adapt to a perfectly normal work environment

I have, I work from home. Your notion of modern working is off by some margin, I worked in an open-plan office in 1992.

Who’s time.costs more

I think you missed the context. It was a genuine question about priorities and cost to the business.
The A-grade 1st line support techie may really want to spend the next hour hoovering dust out of a pc that is going to go back into stock, but if you have a G-grade somebodyorother sat on their hands for the same hour waiting on a job that the A-grade could do in 5 mins that’s a cost that could be avoided.
Cost/opportunity/risk avoidance etc.

Not usually.

‘Oi my mouse isn’t working’

vs tapping away for at least 30 seconds whilst that stuff is entered into the ticketing software.

In my experience here, this wouldn’t even reach IT. They’d just pinch a neighbour’s in their open-plan office and then a game of rodent-based musical chairs would break out.

I said this earlier. People are inherently lazy bastards, they aren’t going to log a call if it’s easier to rock up and go “can I have a new mouse?” and by the same chalk they’re not going to bother to walk all the way over to IT’s desks when there’s an unsupervised one just lying there on someone else’s desk.

(In truth, I can’t remember when I last came across a report of a faulty mouse, probably back when they still had a ball.)

It was a genuine question about priorities and cost to the business.
The A-grade 1st line support techie may really want to spend the next hour hoovering dust out of a pc that is going to go back into stock, but if you have a G-grade somebodyorother sat on their hands for the same hour waiting on a job that the A-grade could do in 5 mins that’s a cost that could be avoided.

Sure, but. It’s a good point but not that simple.

In the case of the OP, he’s half of a 2-person team servicing 350+ employees. He’s 1st line, 2nd line and 3rd line.

Hoovering dust out of a PC is something you might possibly undertake when there’s absolutely bog all else to do (and is frankly a demeaning example if you think that’s what even front line techs do all day, I’d have them doing self-paced training if they were that quiet) but your G-grade whateverthatevenmeans can just wait or go mither someone else if the network for the entire building is out. Any C-Suite execs worth their salt would immediately recognise that.

If only there was some way of categorising, prioritising and managing this sort of thing. I’m amazed no-one’s thought of it before. Maybe Outlook Calendar…

Hoovering dust out of a PC is something you might possibly undertake when there’s absolutely bog all else to do (and is frankly a demeaning example if you think that’s what even front line techs do all day, I’d have them doing self-paced training if they were that quiet) but your G-grade whateverthatevenmeans can just wait or go mither someone else if the network for the entire building is out. Any C-Suite execs worth their salt would immediately recognise that.

It wasn’t meant to be demeaning it was simply to represent a low priority task.

if the network for the entire building is out

Well obviously that would be higher priority.

Did anyone mention a ticketing system and prioritisation? 😆

^^ we are testing Outlook for that under good advice

Jesus.

He can log a ticket as well.

“Before the cock crows three times, have you tried turning it off and back on again?”

You saw how angry he got when he had to go and visit the finance department, would you seriously tell him you’re not replacing his mouse until he’s submitted a ticket?

Ticketing systems are only good if the people at the other end know what to prioritise or have any idea how the business actually works. In my experience they usually don’t. We used to have database access ourselves. Then updated IT systems and something that would’ve taken a couple of clicks is now a ticket, followed by chasing the ticket, then escalating the ticket and finally (sometimes) the issue being resolved. Then they have the cheek to ask for a rating.

We used to have database access ourselves. Then updated IT systems and something that would’ve taken a couple of clicks is now a ticket

You work for the Post Office and I claim my £10

@Cougar, I’d like to report that I had a faulty mouse the other week. I dug around in a box, found an old wired one then posted on here looking for a mouse recommendation.
I’m now the proud owner of a new Logitech anywhere 2.

What happens if the ticketing system goes down?

What happens if the ticketing system goes down?

It doesn’t if implemented correctly, same way websites never go down if implimented correctly, ideally it’s load balanced over several physical servers in normal operation, so if one has a problem, it can be taken off line for analysis.

This puts additional load on the remaining live systems, which is why you always over-spec capacity so you can fail-over to a working one in a crunch situation, albiet a slower but still functional service for critical operations.

Of course this requires extra cost and extra admin, and requires documented disaster recovery plans etc.

Guess who has to write said documents and procedures, and ensure they actually work, via test runs in an emergency with zero extra budget? yeah that’s right..the IT team.

So forgive us if we snort at you for rocking up to our desks to wax lyrical about a printer jam or an iPhone with a flat battery.

I have today had great success in raising a ticket asking for last months ticket to be looked at. Sometimes stuff falls through the cracks regardless of the processes (escaped sysadmin speaking)

Sometimes stuff falls through the cracks

Tell me about it! Theoretically, we have the tools in place to handle tickets correctly but no one else in the company is the slightest be interested in triaging anything raised. There’s a couple of key people on our customer support team who have the ears of the CEO so whenever  certain clients raise a “request/bug/new feature” then it almost certainly gets moved into the next available sprint without any sort of impact analysis

So planned stuff keeps on getting deferred or forgotten about. I used to get really pissed off about this lack of strategic thinking but now I’m just coasting my way to retirement 😄

Anyway, the company is (or was, pre-COVID) open plan so this obviously why we’ve failed to grow as a company…

I did that with a 2U ThunderX2 box. HR rushed out to site facilities to get a dB meter, the result was 100+dB when the fans span up!

I used to run an industrial folding machine that would take about a 1/4 ton stack of SRA3 paper at one end and turn it into neatly folded but untrimmed leaflets at the other, about eight or nine feet away. It was in a long, narrow room with a high ceiling and plastic strip doors at each end. A decibel meter I installed on my phone said it was running continuously at 95-98dB.
I was told off for wearing custom-fit earphones plugged into my phone, because I wouldn’t be able to hear a fire alarm. I pointed out, quite reasonably, that the noise levels I was working in required PPE hearing protection that, along with the noise, meant I couldn’t hear the fire alarm anyway.

Not long after a fire alarm with a flashing light was installed in the room… 😁

accountability. “Why did you do this?” – “you asked me to.” – “No I didn’t!” If they didn’t log the ticket then you have zero evidence that you broke something because you were directly instructed to do so.

Yeah, happened to me a lot at one place I worked at, no ticketing, I had five or six different jobs within the company, so it was very easy to forget something that I’d been asked about earlier, but had slipped my mind because of a succession of other things had been added to my workload.

These were then brought up at the regular personal assessment meetings, where I’d be asked why I’d forgotten such-and-such; “because of all the extra stuff you keep adding to my daily routine”

“So, how can we help you?”

“By taking back some of the extra work and giving it to someone else”

“Oh, we can’t do that, but how else can we help you?”

Actual conversation, before they kicked me out after eleven years working there.

Best thing that could have happened, it got me the job driving for BCA, followed by my last job at Smart Fleet Solutions/Cazoo, which was a brilliant place to work for, they actually cared about mental health.

What’s all this talk about logging tickets and a prioritisation system?!  I work for a huge company and whether it’s an intermittent problem with my mouse getting a bit laggy, or myself and all my colleagues find a major application is down and can’t do any work…we all sit in the same call queuing system for 45 minutes, and then support log the call, which gives them one of about 6 scripts to read out to us, which ranges from turn it off and on again (we’ve already indicated that we’ve done this my pressing option 2) to very quickly progressing to telling you that a laptop swap by courier has just been arranged for tomorrow morning and no, we absolutely can’t raise a second line request even though you know there is a script they can run. My general approach is to send the new device back to them (which would also arrive with the same problem) until I can get to second line (which must hurt their stats considerably!)

PS Storm in a teacup, your boss has already basically given you permission to take over his office, you just need to ensure its easier and more pleasant for him to work on your open plan desk by occupying all the sockets and LANs and most of his desk

Nobody there has read any BOFH have they? No one lets IT mix with the normal people. There’s going to be a run on carpet, quicklime and shovels. Directors being found in the lift after a weekend locked in and drinking their own urine.

OMG

I feel like most people posting on this thread either work in IT support or get their knowledge from watching old episodes of the IT crowd.

Well if nothing else it makes me grateful to work where I do.

They’d just pinch a neighbour’s in their open-plan office and then a game of rodent-based musical chairs would break out

Due to this in my open plan office, mouses, keyboards and HDMI cables are cable tied to each desk to stop them going walkies and its actually worked.

Due to this in my open plan office, mouses, keyboards and HDMI cables are cable tied to each desk to stop them going walkies and its actually worked.

No wonder people bring knives to the office!  Cutting up apples is just an excuse – liberating the cables is the real reason!

My general approach is to send the new device back to them (which would also arrive with the same problem)

Most of that is down to deskilling of the staff and hence new laptop/reimaging is basically the first and last option.
I did have some great fun with our helpdesk around webex crashing my computer whenever a meeting was started. Asking for a screenshare to “see the problem” and then getting confused when it ended abruptly and asking why I had dropped off line.
They fell back to the reimage and I then had to dodge their requests for several weeks until they gave up since getting everything set back up on my laptop would cost me several days.
Ended up using phone/browser instead until a random update fixed it.

I got a Logitech “POP” keyboard and mouse from the OH for Christmas.

You can hear me sending an angry e-mail from the other end of the open plan office 😂

Ironically one of the marketing points of the mouse is “silent click”, really?? When Paired with a mechanical keyboard??

In truth, I can’t remember when I last came across a report of a faulty mouse, probably back when they still had a ball

I got through one of the generic Dell ones every ~8 months, the scroll wheels give up. Working on engineering drawings so lots of zooming in/out.

Crikey. I’m glad I worked in Distrubution and Sales. We had a “Robbie-the-robot” who used to fix stuff for us. Bless ‘I’m.

Not usually.

‘Oi my mouse isn’t working’

vs tapping away for at least 30 seconds whilst that stuff is entered into the ticketing software.

Are you saying do not log the ticket? Otherwise I do not see how this argument counters mine?

I’m now the proud owner of a new Logitech anywhere 2.

That’s what I have.

I had a Logitech Nano since 2008, it’s been nothing short of perfect. When I started WFH I needed a second mouse, went back to Logitech, found the Anywhere 2 which looked to be the spiritual successor to the Nano and bought it.

It arrived, I unboxed it, was astonished at how identical they were. I went to show my partner who was in the kitchen, “hey, check this out…” at which point the old mouse squirted out of my hand and hit the deck. Late 19th Century Earthenware tiles fired in the kilns of Mordor which were instadeath to anything dropped from a height of more than about three inches.* I had two mice for a grand total of about six minutes. Fortunately the new one works with three devices.

(* I’m not really exaggerating. I had a glass bottle fall from the bottom shelf of a bottom cupboard, so the height of the kickboard, and shatter. I got adept at instinctively arresting falls with my foot. Great when you knock your favourite mug off the worktop; less great when it’s a chef’s knife and you’re wearing sandals.)

I did have some great fun with our helpdesk around webex crashing my computer whenever a meeting was started. Asking for a screenshare to “see the problem” and then getting confused when it ended abruptly and asking why I had dropped off line.

I have a hundred of these tales, I could (and am tempted to) write a book.

One time, I was monitoring / assisting with a call for a junior Tech. A chap rings in with a complaint that when his modem dials out (different times), the phone line gets cut off. Dave says, “OK, can you just try that now for me please, and we’ll see if we can work out what’s going on?” The customer wails, “but that will cut me off!” Dave hits Mute, turns to me with fear in his eyes, “shit, they’re getting smarter!”

I’m more of an MX Master type, the form looks very similar to my G700s including the mighty clutchless scroll wheel. I now hate clicky scroll for anything more than a few lines.

MX Master because it is unlikely to walk in our office. All my colleague are people of a certain age who struggle with ultra-fast scrolling!

I have a Logitech Lift (because I have a wonky right wrist) and an MX Mini keyboard. Even if I leave the laptop at work, the mouse and keyboard come home with me at night…

rogermooreFull Member
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.

I’m amazed that this advice from Mr Moore has been ignored. The man is an expert in working in open plan environments, literally anything from a casino to a volcano via, weirdly, a circus.  I mean he even invaded an African country once. Have any of you ever seen him ring IT support? That’s the sort of self sufficiency we need. The timer is in the red, you need to make a decision about which wire to cut (with your possible illegal but ever-so-useful) knife and you are having trouble raising a ticket with IT… No, What Would Moore Do?

Raises eyebrow

I now hate clicky scroll for anything more than a few lines.

It’s toggleable on the mouse with a click of the wheel. The traditional middle-click is a button just below.

I’m amazed that this advice from Mr Moore has been ignored.

I’ve shared an open-plan office with Mr Moore, albeit the STW poster rather than the more well known one.

Build a maze out of the office divider panels and stick this at the entrance. They either use the wheel or try to navigate the maze.

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I feel like most people posting on this thread either work in IT support or get their knowledge from watching old episodes of the IT crowd.

This is an interesting venn diagram judging from my user experience

Ah @cougar I really miss your blue neon fish bowl.
RM.

It’s toggleable on the mouse with a click of the wheel. The traditional middle-click is a button just below.

Mine is the other way round, I prefer it like that. Just wish the other bazillion buttons worked natively.

Ah @cougar I really miss your blue neon fish bowl.

I have photos of its evacuation, and of the building in general. It’s quite sad. I think it was me and Andy (IT) who were the last men standing strip-mining it before the doors closed.

Apologies to everyone else, RM and I worked together and this will mean nothing to anyone else.

15+ years ago when I was last in an IT support role we moved office, inc. moving from having our own room to being in the open plan. I wasn’t happy about it either, worrying about constant user interruptions etc. (trying to bypass the helpdesk system) but in reality, apart from a few annoying users who had to be told a few times to raise a ticket it wasn’t much of an issue. Was sometimes a problem back when we’d build a physical server in the office being taking it to a DC (complaints about noise) but these days most stuff is either virtual or built in the DC anyway. We also still had a separate room with a keycode locked door for storage of IT stuff – I’d at least make sure you have something similar