Ask HN: Management keeps assigning me IT work unrelated to my responsibilities
5 comments
Well, you can always leave.
Usually this should start with a frank conversation with your manager. Something like this: "For a while now, I've been fielding IT requests from the entire company. I appreciate that you've been helping manage expectations upwards, but my workload is still unsustainable, and to be honest I haven't been enjoying my work for a while now. If this situation doesn't improve by {insert near-future date}, I'll have to leave."
And then: just start saying no to things. Someone high up says "I need X immediately"? Either say "well, I'll put it on my backlog, and I can get to that in Y weeks" or "I can do that immediately, if you go to these people and tell them I can't do what they asked because this is higher priority."
At least, that's if you want to do it the gradual and non-bridge-burning way. You can also decide that game isn't worth it; there's lot of other tech jobs out there.
Usually this should start with a frank conversation with your manager. Something like this: "For a while now, I've been fielding IT requests from the entire company. I appreciate that you've been helping manage expectations upwards, but my workload is still unsustainable, and to be honest I haven't been enjoying my work for a while now. If this situation doesn't improve by {insert near-future date}, I'll have to leave."
And then: just start saying no to things. Someone high up says "I need X immediately"? Either say "well, I'll put it on my backlog, and I can get to that in Y weeks" or "I can do that immediately, if you go to these people and tell them I can't do what they asked because this is higher priority."
At least, that's if you want to do it the gradual and non-bridge-burning way. You can also decide that game isn't worth it; there's lot of other tech jobs out there.
Time to manage up. This is your boss' job and they're not doing it very well. Be frank with him - it sucks and you're ready to leave.
There are tools you can put in place - a ticketing system, an email filter, a slack bot, but fundamentally you need to make noise, that you're not IT, and your boss needs to support you on this.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and they're going to keep working you into something breaks. don't let that that be you. demand changes otherwise you're leaving or you're going to burn out which is the same thing for the company.
There are tools you can put in place - a ticketing system, an email filter, a slack bot, but fundamentally you need to make noise, that you're not IT, and your boss needs to support you on this.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and they're going to keep working you into something breaks. don't let that that be you. demand changes otherwise you're leaving or you're going to burn out which is the same thing for the company.
First read "The Phoenix Project".
Then tell your manager to read "The Phoenix Project". Or just extract the relevant lessons directly from there and send them to him.
Then tell your manager to read "The Phoenix Project". Or just extract the relevant lessons directly from there and send them to him.
If you don't have an official IT team, is there someone else that should be handling these requests?
Either renegotiate or pack your bags?
Since I’ve joined, more and more people are coming to me with tasks that have nothing to do with this. Like, “You have access to our Microsoft Azure account, right? Can you fix this problem with our Microsoft Outlook?” I genuinely have no idea why I am asked these questions in particular but every day this seems to spread. They come from everyone: engineers, designers, managers, executives… I think someone at the top is telling people I’m our IT team and people are happy to go along with it because we actually don’t have an official IT team!
I’ve tried to push back against these things. When I explain this isn’t my job, usually that person complains to some high up who then tells me they’d “really appreciate it”’if I helped. Usually this is when my manager tells me I have to do it. I’ve spoken about this with my manager a hundred times. He’s in full agreement with me that I shouldn’t be doing these things, and he promises “I’ll talk with them about how this is the last time” but that never seems to help.
Just last week I was brought into a meeting to discuss a new product the company is releasing soon and they asked me for help creating Kubernetes credentials for the dev team. I said “Absolutely I can do that, but I can’t help with email or anything else like that. I can only do the Kubernetes stuff.” Everyone agreed, even the CTO. And now a week later, “We really need your help setting up our website.” It makes me want to scream that I keep having the same conversations over and over again.
The systems I’m responsible for are really crappy and everyone knows it and hates it. I don’t enjoy being a person that is constantly asked about bugs reported to me months ago that I still haven’t fixed. My manager is constantly defending me to other engineers, telling them I’m so busy and it’s not my fault, and he has negotiated a lot of leeway in the deadlines for my normal tasks. I appreciate that, but this shouldn’t be necessary.
How do I fix this? I don’t want to be pessimistic but it seems impossible for me to fix the underlying problem, which is that a company with 100 employees needs an IT team. But management doesn’t seem interested in this, and I don’t blame them: they’re probably thinking it would be a waste since they’ve already got one (me).