Workload unreasonable?

Housey said:
It is impractical to explain or justify every decision, sometimes the managed need to appreciate that and do what they are asked to do. I am not an advocate of mushroom leadership, people need to buy into you and you need to have your teams back as that way they will fight for and more importantly with you. But there are also times when you simply can't share everything and they need to understand and respect that. Good management is good management. I've been in business for 30 years and in that time the fundamentals have remained the same, in the same way as you remember the good teacher.
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That makes more sense. I thought you were advocating a "me boss you worker" sort of mentality.
 
Also on a purely technical level once the Citrix app is running then the PC isn't doing a right lot else, surely (stuff like RemoteFX or local media rendering excluded)? If these things are literally thin clients then shove them on a network that can access nothing except the Citrix servers, disable the ability to mount removable storage and get rid of the AV.

But the way you've described it the issue isn't with the client, other than the monumental power bills that the company must be paying out to use a P4 as a thin client and an OS about to drop out of support.
 
Caged said:
That makes more sense. I thought you were advocating a "me boss you worker" sort of mentality.
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Quite the reverse. That form of dictatorial oppression is more often than not totally ineffective and not something I advocate at all. People work hard and effectively if they understand clearly what everyone is aiming towards and what their objectives are and how that sits in the bigger world. I have little time for people who take issue with every decision or feel they know more than me about everything. There is no question people know more than me, my challenge is to identify and use that effectively to frame my decisions based on pooling the knowledge of a team of people, spell out why and then make it happen. You never always get it right, but leadership is about informed decision and taking people with you. If they are disruptive or problematical then remove them.
 
the_r_sole said:
really? op just states it's one of his "many bosses" no indication of where their expertise is...

so to rephrase my analogy then:

it's more like going to a specialist garage and the junior mechanic telling the garage owner that he doesn't think his suggested fix will work on the clients car...

i.e. it's not really a decision that he has any influence over as he is not the decision maker in what work needs done

the op had put himself in as the client in his own analogy of a mechanic situation which is completely incorrect and I was pointing that out...
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Yes that is more like the analogy I would use to describe the situation here, the classic scenario where either the manager is making technical decisions they are not qualified to make or they are making managerial decisions based on dodgy information from other qualified technical staff members.
 
Caged said:
Also on a purely technical level once the Citrix app is running then the PC isn't doing a right lot else, surely (stuff like RemoteFX or local media rendering excluded)? If these things are literally thin clients then shove them on a network that can access nothing except the Citrix servers, disable the ability to mount removable storage and get rid of the AV.

But the way you've described it the issue isn't with the client, other than the monumental power bills that the company must be paying out to use a P4 as a thin client and an OS about to drop out of support.
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This seems the most sensible solution to me :)
 
The point I made to him was that even if you did remove mcafee and optimise it, it is never going to be much faster. Therefore it seems to me like a waste of my time. They could get any one in there to remove mcafee on those machines. Why send me all the way down there when based on the information at hand and my experience in technical problems like this, just removing mcafee and taking it off teh domain is not going to make much of a difference.

It seems to me that its more of a PR exercise and this is what this guy is known for, he is a project manager that tries to get on the side of the client by not sticking up for the technical department. Of course the lawyers just see right through this and exploit his bending over backwards to please them attitude. The way i look at it is i have better things to do than play PR games after 3 hour train journeys. They want it to appear like me going down there is them "trying to improve their situation" if i did it remotely that would not have the same effect, so it is effectively just PR bs.

While I would rather take a more sensible long term approach to the problem and fix it for good instead of BS the client, as he likes to do.

I guess the correct analogy would be a middle level mechanic is told to travel 3 hours to fix a car that he has already told his non mechanic quasi-boss it can't be fixed without spending money, but he is just ignored and told to go so it looks like we are trying to fix the car.
 
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Suck it up, be very chilled out and do exactly what you were sent to do. Unfortunately it sounds like you're being sent to show face to a client that is probably hopping mad that things are slow but would rather spend money on people visiting than on replacing ancient equipment.

On the plus side you've got 4 hours of train travel to spend polishing up your CV and making a nice shortlist of jobs on LinkedIn
 
I'd just refuse to do it on the grounds that removing AV contravenes the security policy/is a security breach. If you remove McAfee and that endpoint gets infected with malware you're the one whose going to be held responsible. At the very least request the manager emails you an explicit instruction to remove AV against your advice.
 
Technical people get dealth a bad deal at work because non techies just dont understand the level of work required. I would try to communicate this to them first.
 
scorza said:
If you remove McAfee and that endpoint gets infected with malware
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Via what route though? It's a thin client.
Maybe worm propagation but I seem to remember that was fixable.

I used gateway scanning with a bit of custom analysis, NOTHING got through that :) (no spam either)
 
I was thinking about the anology its more like. lol

A middle level mechanic who looks after two large auto shops and has 10 car back log on each site to resolve is sent to 3 hour train journey and stay over night, to try and improve the speed of a car at no cost to the client even though he told the non mechanic middle level manager that it was not possible to increase the speed of the car.
 
bitslice said:
Via what route though? It's a thin client.
Maybe worm propagation but I seem to remember that was fixable.

I used gateway scanning with a bit of custom analysis, NOTHING got through that :) (no spam either)
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USB would be the main risk I would guess. Whatever though it's not the point - no IT security policy is going to permit removal of AV software so the OP should use that to get out of doing nugatory work at personal cost.
 
Why don't you get a job where your opinion of what you should be doing is one that matters? Whilst you're at it, make sure it carries over the benefit of your existing role which appears to allow you full visibility and understanding of the greater problem at hand and not just one small aspect of it.
 
I truly feel like this is one of those moments where the OP just needs to be told to man the hell up.

Your boss might indeed know that you going will not fix anything but it'll show the client that you're at least making an effort. At the end of the day they're the people that keep you in a job so stop being a whiny little muppet and go.

Before you try and ask if I'd do it...I've flown to Angola just to tell a client in person that we were going to be late on our contractual deliverables and to discuss possible solutions we could take to minimise the impact (as well as LDs). Despite fluffing up it was noted that because of service like that they intended to (and did) use us again.
 
I think you'll find that many of us 'technicians' are in a very similar boat. Too many men in suits that only have thoughts for their own agenda. Blame the tech support for not being able to provide the impossible and if it all goes t**ts up I'll take my wedge and move on to another unsuspecting company with a well written reference.
 
anything I don't mind said:
One of my bosses thinks that removing mcafee and taking them off the domain will speed the pc up. I told him that is a waste of time and i don't have the time to uninstall mcafee or whatever he thinks will fix the problem.

But they just went a head and booked a ticket to poole from waterloo for 8am, it takes me 1 hour and half to even get to waterloo from where i live so ill have to wake up at like 5:30 to catch the train.

Do you think this unreasonable and would you tolerate this?
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I would just do what your boss says to do really. Tell him how long this will roughly take and go enjoy yourself.... :)

Don't do any other jobs while you are fixing this one...

PS I'm in the same boat now but I just do them when requested. I don't mind because I get to venture out to other places.

Oh and another thing if the end user gets infected and complains again just say your boss told you to remove it..
- then you might get another train ride out :)
 
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OP, Politics.

Its cheaper to pay you to go and look at a clients system (despite you knowing nothing can be done) than it is for the client to be told over the phone their IT system is **** and them then thinking your company are not accomodating/helpful and taking their contract elsewhere.
 
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