Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016
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@JaredBusch LOL. I used much bigger numbers than that. There are 3 partners, all of which are over 70, one is 83.
The prevailing response was "we don't do things cheap to save money, we don't cut corners". And then a ridiculous amount of speculation about who would hack our cloud based email accounts.
Maybe I am not expressing how demoralized I was from all of this. If I could have started here before the previous IT guy MAYBE I could have made the case.
The bottom line is that these guys are old school and can afford to force everyone to do things based on their archaic standards.
Relevant Example; we have employees who drive 5 hours here each way for a Monday meeting, every week. There is sufficient bandwidth for a great video conferencing solution. They want them here so they can "look em right in the eyeball".
They aren't complete idiots though. The state of West Virginia regular sends a helicopter to pick them up whenever there is a dam issue and they want them there onsite.
I made the best pitch of my life. I think they started to hate me before I gave up.
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@magroover Well, then roll it out and watch that leased server burn.
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@JaredBusch on top of the fact that for 2 years they were lied two after rejecting the previous IT guys proposal to move to the cloud. They were so upset about that I nearly wished I hadn't told them.
I saw no reason not to shoot straight though.
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@JaredBusch If I came back and said I need a new $15,000 server to make this work, they would tell me to do it. Almost a guarantee.
Actually thinking about doing just that and reporting back here.
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@magroover I would buy a new server from @xByteSean or something instead of even looking at anything on that piece of shit lease.
You can get a solid server for less than $5k that will more than meet your needs. and you can no touch that existing setup until you are ready to migrate it to a VM or soemthing after this project is done.
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@magroover said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
The prevailing response was "we don't do things cheap to save money, we don't cut corners". And then a ridiculous amount of speculation about who would hack our cloud based email accounts.
Did you immediately respond with "so you decided to go cloud then, great, was really concerned with the corner cutting and going on premises like you didn't think this was a real business or something."?
If not, that should have been your reaction.
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@magroover said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
Maybe I am not expressing how demoralized I was from all of this. If I could have started here before the previous IT guy MAYBE I could have made the case.
You may want to train them on this. That one guy made mistakes was one thing. And they should dig into their own processes as to how that happened. Did they hire poorly? Did they train poorly? Did they micromanage like idiots? Did they not manage well?
We can assume, no matter how bad the previous guy was, that some degree of management failure happened too.
Now what do we see continuing? Super basic management mistakes that we'd expect from newbies with no clue how to run a business.
Mistakes that they are making...
- Continuing to run IT themselves rather than hiring someone that knows what they are doing to run it. The partners are retaining the IT management role themselves. Are they qualified to do this?
- If the owners are not qualified IT pros but make IT decisions, then that signals that they lack management qualifications too. This is an incredible mistake for someone to make. Even high schoolers can recognize was a basic management mistake this is.
- Their reaction to a security breach is to ... be less secure and eschew common sense security practices? That is, quite literally, insane. Security cannot be derived from emotional panic. Nor from hubris. Those are the reactions I sense here.
- They say that they don't want to cut corners, yet they sound like a weekend hobby... but not a serious one. They aren't up to par with my house. If they were out having drinks with me and described how they work and tried to tell me they were a "real" business, I would just laugh at them. They aren't even "can pass off over drinks as real business people" level here. They are below the home line.
- Why are you being treated as if you were the former IT person? Are they demented and can't tell one person from another? Ask them this directly (not the demented bit) and ask why you are being forced to do IT poorly as a form of "punishment" when the person who made the original mistakes isn't there any more and has no connection to you. How can they call themselves managers if they are messing up so dramatically?
- Ask them why they are not trying to solve the problems of the past but are using past mistakes as the foundation for making even more mistakes.
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@magroover said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
They aren't complete idiots though. The state of West Virginia regular sends a helicopter to pick them up whenever there is a dam issue and they want them there onsite.
The later does not suggest a lack of the former. That they have some marketing and have convinced a government agency to funnel them money means nothing. In fact, that it is a government that does this and we know that they are idiots (you can't claim otherwise after establishing that they are very much idiots) simply suggests that they have purchased their way into that job either though certifications, special experience or bribes. Nothing in that happening suggests that they are experts or not idiots. That's a misreading of them having acquired government funds.
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@magroover said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
@JaredBusch on top of the fact that for 2 years they were lied two after rejecting the previous IT guys proposal to move to the cloud. They were so upset about that I nearly wished I hadn't told them.
I saw no reason not to shoot straight though.
So they are intentionally sabotaging themselves to punish you because they can't remember that you are a different person. That actually sounds like senility.
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@magroover said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
@JaredBusch If I came back and said I need a new $15,000 server to make this work, they would tell me to do it. Almost a guarantee.
Actually thinking about doing just that and reporting back here.
Might as well. Sounds like they don't care about trying to be a viable business. Most important lesson - it's not your job to care. If they don't care, you don't care.
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Something that you have to ask yourself....
You know nothing about the former IT guy. But now you know something about management... they are reckless, emotional and idiots. Sure, the former IT guy might have been terrible. But was he? Given what you know about the people that he worked for, do you have any grounds for really thinking that the problems were his? Sure, they might have been. But there is no way to know. He may have been making due the best that he could working for illogical, emotional people who didn't want to let him do what he was there to do and made him cut corners and forced him to not do a good job.
He's not there to explain why he did what he did. You can't know what they told him. You can't know what budget constraints or limits or mandates they gave. What you DO know for sure is that they micromanage things they don't understand, do things backwards from their stated goals and use emotions to drive bad decisions while not being able to separate people because they aren't seeing you as a human being, but as a role. There is no way to blame the old IT guy under those conditions, you just can't know what he was working with.
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@scottalanmiller said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
Something that you have to ask yourself....
You know nothing about the former IT guy. But now you know something about management... they are reckless, emotional and idiots. Sure, the former IT guy might have been terrible. But was he? Given what you know about the people that he worked for, do you have any grounds for really thinking that the problems were his? Sure, they might have been. But there is no way to know. He may have been making due the best that he could working for illogical, emotional people who didn't want to let him do what he was there to do and made him cut corners and forced him to not do a good job.
He's not there to explain why he did what he did. You can't know what they told him. You can't know what budget constraints or limits or mandates they gave. What you DO know for sure is that they micromanage things they don't understand, do things backwards from their stated goals and use emotions to drive bad decisions while not being able to separate people because they aren't seeing you as a human being, but as a role. There is no way to blame the old IT guy under those conditions, you just can't know what he was working with.
@magroover You will also note that @scottalanmiller is a shy, retiring sort that we constantly have to coax an opinion out of.
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@Kelly said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
@scottalanmiller said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
Something that you have to ask yourself....
You know nothing about the former IT guy. But now you know something about management... they are reckless, emotional and idiots. Sure, the former IT guy might have been terrible. But was he? Given what you know about the people that he worked for, do you have any grounds for really thinking that the problems were his? Sure, they might have been. But there is no way to know. He may have been making due the best that he could working for illogical, emotional people who didn't want to let him do what he was there to do and made him cut corners and forced him to not do a good job.
He's not there to explain why he did what he did. You can't know what they told him. You can't know what budget constraints or limits or mandates they gave. What you DO know for sure is that they micromanage things they don't understand, do things backwards from their stated goals and use emotions to drive bad decisions while not being able to separate people because they aren't seeing you as a human being, but as a role. There is no way to blame the old IT guy under those conditions, you just can't know what he was working with.
@magroover You will also note that @scottalanmiller is a shy, retiring sort that we constantly have to coax an opinion out of.
she's got your number @scottalanmiller
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This thread inspired me...
https://mangolassi.it/topic/13083/was-it-the-last-it-guys-fault
Something HUGE to keep in mind in your current situation... you are not the IT manager. The partners are. You are providing them advice, but they are running IT. It is their decisions that you implement.
What does this mean for you? It means that the "IT guy" in the past was just following orders (or disobeying them) just like you, he was not the IT decision maker. The head(s) of IT are still there from when those mistakes were made and have not been replaced (and we assume also not chastised or even made aware of their role in the problems.) So their emotional response to problems in the past was to shoot the messenger, it sounds like, and ignore the fact that they were the ones mandating policy. Maybe he didn't follow orders well, who knows.
But what you know is that IT does not have a break here. The head(s) of IT have remained from then until now. There is continuity. If there are IT problems, the IT people who ultimately hold that departmental responsibility are the exact same people giving you crazy marching orders now.
That's a critical perspective for you... and for them.
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Sorry was engaged with user needs.
Honestly I don't think you could underestimate the way these guys want what they want, regardless of the counseling and leadership or cost containment/reduction before them.
I've been at much more pragmatic companies where there was dwindling revenue and stagnated growth.
However, I will ponder a return meeting. Wish I could sneak a camera in this, or live stream it here.
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@magroover said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
Sorry was engaged with user needs.
Or "poo flinging monkeys" as we decided to start calling them. PFM from now on.
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@magroover said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
Honestly I don't think you could underestimate the way these guys want what they want, regardless of the counseling and leadership or cost containment/reduction before them.
You can sum that up with the term "irrational" or possible "erratic."
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@magroover said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
I've been at much more pragmatic companies where there was dwindling revenue and stagnated growth.
In business, especially business with government entities, there is rarely a connection between competence and revenue. If your value is being a "member of the old boys club" for example, it likely makes no difference if you can do anything. Or if you are a doctor, you just pay to get your certification and you get jobs as a sort of government welfare system where unless you truly screw up, you are basically guaranteed a minimum salary that you have "purchased" from the government. Does not imply that you are a good doctor, a competent business person or even a functional adult.
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@magroover said in Moving from Exchange Online Plan 1 to In House Exchange 2016:
However, I will ponder a return meeting. Wish I could sneak a camera in this, or live stream it here.
Really the question is.... do you respect them enough to bother? Do you have the confidence in them to think that they can overcome their irrational emotional response, or do you feel that the effort to help them is too great and that they need to be treated more like children and just placated.
In reality, for the majority of the SMB, the later makes more sense. They have chosen to be the IT managers, once you have made your case and done your job, you have no further responsibility. All problems rest fully on their shoulders as the decision makers.
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And if it EVER goes down even for a second LOL. I don't know guys, I can't decide if another failed attempt is worth the strife it would cause me. Everyone here is happy and I am at a point where its just irrelevant.
It's akin to the saying "happy wife, happy life". I have left the writing on the while as to say "this is not at all what I recommend". I will have to ponder this a little further.
