April 9, 2021 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item You've Changed. Has Your Employer?
April 9, 2021 at 1:15 pm
The DBA and development teams where I work have been off site for the entire time and everything that we got done before the pandemic still gets done. Hours may be more fluid but the work is completed. There is a section of tech in our company that has had a different experience. I work for a lab and we've had lab techs in the office every day since this started. Since the lab is still running and busier that ever, the IT/Networking staff has had to be on site for the whole pandemic to service user issues. Someone's laptop won't boot, a printer is off line, a network switch failed, etc. My hat's off to them. I can't imagine the extra stress that has added to their lives.
April 9, 2021 at 2:53 pm
The large state department has changed in some ways, but not in others, from my point of view. There are portions I know little about, such as the help desk. There's a lot of people who work in the help desk. I've no idea how their jobs have changed, if at all. Other sections in our IT I know little about, so can't say how they've changed or been affected by COVID.
Like Tom Uellner said, the DBAs and developers have all been working from home. I totally love working from home and hope that arrangement stays, at the very least on a part time basis. The pandemic has proven that upper management's distrust of our getting any work done if we worked from home, is just wrong. We've done our jobs as well or better, than when we are in our offices.
I've seen magnificent work done to address issues affecting the public in a much faster way than has ever happened before in this department.
But in other significant ways, nothing has changed. Most significantly there's a large bureaucratic structure in place to approve of all changes, no matter how small. This bureaucracy is such an impediment to getting things done that it is a frustration to many people, and yet it's taken on a life of its own. Early in the pandemic I heard messages from upper management that we had changed and adopted a more agile approach to project management. That things were being done in weeks what would normally take several months or longer to accomplish. However, as time went by, I realized that nothing really had changed in this regard. As has happened for as long as I've been here, if either the Governor or the Cabinet Secretary of our department wants something done, then we dispense with the board that approves of all changes to get the Governor/Cabinet Secretary's requests done. If not, then the full force of bureaucracy is still in force, delaying progress just as they did pre-pandemic. BTW, I am not saying we should do away with the committee to evaluate changes. I'm saying limit their reach to big issues, so smaller issues can be handled locally, where the problem exists.
So, I'd say it's a mixed bag.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
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