May 1, 2008 at 1:48 am
Has anyone here ever been asked to train someone with no technical experience (not even A+ or html experience) to maintain and administer their servers? I administer a fairly large and mission critical enterprise Web application hosted on a number of servers.
Unfortunately, for reasons beyone my control, the program is now managed by a business group and not an IT unit. Despite my protests to the contrary, management decided to hire someone who has a pleasant and professional business resume training employees on financial business applications. However, they have no experience, have not even opened up a system and peered inside. They do not seem to have an aptitude with IT either.
I have tried to explain that you just do not log onto an enterprise server that is used by multiple thousands of employees daily and start poking around. That for most of us it took years and progressively responsible technical positions before we were ready to be trusted with Mission Critical servers in a large organization.
I don't know, I guess I am going to have to attempt to do this. I am dumfounded. I don't mean to sound elitest or protective, I am honestly concerned about the potential for mishap. How would you feel? Any sage advice? 🙂
May 1, 2008 at 6:41 am
Be very, very nice about it, but get it down in writing that you're suggesting this might be a poor decision. Then, as long as you're getting paid... train away. I've been in a similar situation. Fighting it is just going to make the business mad. Better to let them fail as long as you can insure that they're failure doesn't affect your employment (assuming you want to keep the job). Do the best you can with the trainee. Emphasize over and over again that if they do something bad, everything goes away.
Remember the old joke, the pig might sing.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
May 1, 2008 at 7:14 am
Gotta agree with Grant here. Get some CYA documentation and then just do your best to train them first for everyday occurrences, how to check logs, backups etc etc and then try to gain some idea of their troubleshooting ability. Which I personally believe to be the most important trait. Everything else can be taught (eventually). How to analyze and troubleshoot an issue and logical thinking can be enhanced in a person (mostly by practice), but it's either something they get or don't.
When you think they're up to it, let them handle a few issues that you already know the answer to and see how they perform. If they just can't hack it, perhaps they'll get a better sense for their own inadequacies and your problem will go away on it's own.
-Luke.
May 1, 2008 at 7:35 am
One other thought, this sort of thing usually derives from something the business thinks it's not getting, so it wants to put a more business focused person in place. You might investigate with those users what's missing from a business stantpoint that they think this guy will supply. It might be that they want more control over presentation, but don't understand that that is different from administering the system. Educating them could be in order as well.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
May 1, 2008 at 7:50 am
Your management has put in you in a horrible spot where you'll get no credit if it goes well and will get the mess\blame if it goes badly. My best recommendation is monster.com. Once management puts you in a situation where you can't succeed it is time to leave.
Good luck,
David
May 1, 2008 at 8:31 am
Grant and Luke have good advice. I'll add one more: update your resume.
You might be the fall guy if this fails.
I'll pull for you and wish you good luck. There have been some good non-IT people that get it and are trainable. My co-worker and now MVP, Brad Magahee started in a non-IT world completely and learned it to do his job and look at him now.
May 1, 2008 at 8:45 am
I would do the following (after 2 days of cursing upper management)
1. Ask management for a quantifiable list of objectives they wish to accomplish. If they won’t provide one, make a list yourself and send it to them for approval.
2. Get a good book and have your trainee work their way through it. There is no sense in you wasting your time teaching them how to start an application.
3. Start keeping a log of EVERYTHING you do. Prioritize it and start walking your trainee through each task. They can document everything you do.
4. Set up a system for them to work on. Create conditions that you routinely must trouble-shoot and have them identify and fix the problems.
5. Document, document, document. Everything you do and everything they do. This is obviously CYA time.
6. Plan a vacation where you will not be available.
Good luck. Upper management continually proves the old Mark Twain saying, “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits!” The air must be thin at the top because the higher they climb, the dumber they get.
May 1, 2008 at 8:51 am
Apprenticeship is a good way to train someone. Give them simple tasks to do, and some help on those, and work your way up from there.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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May 1, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Don't have time to reply much but thanks everyone. Good advice. And thanks for the support!
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