'delegating' Is this bad management or normal? Where is the line?

LegacyUser

I decided to make a post on here as I am very worried about a friend of mine.


I don't work in an office and never have so the office politics and envoirment in such places in terms of what is 'the norm, acceptible' etc are lost on me.

A friend of mine has been off from work for the guts of nearly 2 years after having a breakdown, the end result of 2 years of unfair treatment by her manager and out right bullying be a colleage. She was very close to killing herself a number of times throughout all this and is currently still suffering from depression having spent thousands on counciling and doctors, but largly doing a lot better. This is all still hanging over her head though in limbo and we talk about it a lot.

But what I'm actually curious about is one specific example we've talked about that confuses me. She works in IT and her manager basically comes across as a very scatter brained individual who forgets the names of her team members and really doesnt get very involved with her team at all. So its different from the overbearing demon manager one might think and instead it seems to the other end of the spectrum where people have to push her for teammeetings and such and then remind her again constantly. If she forgets something though, its the teams fault an not hers.

Anyway one of the main issues was a task she gave to my friend which to me makes no sense what so ever. But I don't work in IT or an office so maybe people can enlighten me.

Basically she described to me that the room is split up into 3 levels of support with her on 1st level. She said basically , whenever there was a "big incident" like e-mails not working for the whole building or something, it was the 3rd level guys that sorted that and fixed that. After which they were to add the incident to a database saying what the problem was and how they fixed it etc. This is for managment to keep stats on these bigger incidents etc.

Heres the thing though, the 3rd level guys for some reason would often forget to do their job and fill out this form, or fill it out in a half assed manner. Instead of the manager dealing with this, she created a task for my friend to do. To pester and give out to her team members 2 levels above her, to do their job. When I heard this, alarm bells started ringing for me instantly. But she said this is the kinda thing thats constantly going on with this manager. Except she only gives these specific tasks to certain people and others are her favorites and they get the actual IT work.

But what really killed this for me was when she explained that when the 3rd level guys STILL didnt do their job, the manager would blame her and not the peoples whos job it actually was.

This was one of many, but something that caused a huge amount of stress for my friend as it builded up over time. The manager had very little interaction with her team so when she was interacting with my friend, from what I understand it was usually about this task, and how bad she was. How good she was at anything else had no baring. Work place relations with the 3rd level team deteriorated as a result of this task, of which my friend has no power to force them to do their job since she was only 1st level and no manager.

Ultimatly the manager used my friends failure at 'giving out' to people 2 levels above her, as justification for a whole load of mistreatment my friend suffered in this place.

It just angers me so much listening to this but my friend, who has yet to take any action of the sort. She feels unsure about saying anything because shes been given the impression that "this is normal, thats just how the manager is, managers delegate" etc

And this is the point where I can't really say anything. Because I don't know. To me this is so obviously wrong and pure fuel for a 'toxic work envoirment'. I'm not asking for legal advice, I'm just asking for peoples blunt opinions on this.

Is this wrong? Normal? Standard?

Just so I know myself and maybe I'll show my friend this thread. I just have no experience in office envoirments but it sounds like a lot of toxic behaviours become "normalized" and people quickly forget that things like this are actually wrong on every level. Immoral even.

ifah

It's a perfectly normal task. It just sounds like a standard Incident Resolution template that needs to be filled in and filed. It is quite normal for a junior to manage something like this (for example a Lvl 1 Helpdesk Analyst).
Sounds like your friend might not be suitable for the position - she was requested to ensure that the incident resolution was correctly documented but did not do that. She has been given what is essentially a task management job - she is not there to manage the 3rd level support staff and she is definitely not there to "give out" to them.

I've been that 3rd level support person - often working on numerous Severity 1 incidents at a time and documentation is the last thing I would want to do at that time. But I (and most good IT people) would also identify the need to document an incident and resolution/mitigation steps correctly to prevent a reoccurrence or make it easier to resolve the next time.

But your friend needs to just set up a sequence of steps that would make the completion of the task easier on both parts.
- Just request a meeting with the Team Lead / Manager of the 3rd level support team.
- Get agreement on a set of tasks & timelines that need to be met following every incident.
- Following every incident, send the template, tasklist and timeline to the Lvl 3 engineer
- Review progress
- Escalate if timelines are not being met

The corporate environment (especially in IT) can be very unforgiving - I don't know what type of company/environment your mate works in but just to give an example - we had a Sev 1 incident where we were counting the cost of downtime in thousands of dollars per minute. As a result of a catastrophic failure the eventual cost of that incident was measured in millions of dollars.

LegacyUser

I would understand the task itself is normal but to me there seems to be a failure of logic here.

The 3rd level guys are the ONLY ones who can fill out this form. Its THEIR job and they understand that.

My friend is tasked with 'reminding them' to do their job. Which she does. Endless e-mails and pestering. They either still do not do it as they have zero respect for my friend. Or do it half assed. Though I'm sure there were times they did it with no issues, this went on for 2 years.

Problem is, if the 3rd level support guys DO NOT DO THEIR JOB, despite knowing its their job, despite having someone pester them and send e-mails reminding them, its my friend who gets blamed by her manager every time. Her manager will never say anything to the 3rd level guys.

To me this is an impossible shoot the messenger situation. Nobody wants to deal with this task, the manager hates it and 3rd level just are not arsed from what I've heard. They know they can just forget about it because THEY wont get in any heat for it, only my friend will.

This seems insane, wrong, immoral and so on for the person on 1st level to get all the heat regarding this every time.

Are you really saying this makes sense to you? I'm glad I don't work in an office.

Mrs OBumble

I too think that it's pretty normal. The people working on level 3 are not "above" level 2 or 1, they are simply doing more difficult work.

Delegating follow-up of paperwork to a person whose regular work is non-urgent tasks is quite normal - that's what the entry level people are there for. It just sounds like your friend hasn't worked out effective ways to motivate the Level 3 people to complete the paperwork - clearly sending them endless reminder emails doesn't work.

Also, saying that such tasks are "not IT work" is nonsense: they're a part of running a managed IT service, even if they're not exciting.

techdiver

I'm going to be the descenting voice to the perceived wisdom of some contributors here.

I work in software development (previously IT support and QA) and what is being described is blatant passing of the buck by a weak manager.

I have no issue with the task being assigned, but there is only so much a junior staff member can achieve when people above them (yes, 3rd level would be more senior than 1st level) refuse to complete their tasks. Blaming the Junior person for this is compete nonsense. At the end of the day the 3rd level individuals are not answerable to the junior staff member and will act accordingly. That is the issue. It's up to the manager to pull rank and escalate the issue, instead of blaming the junior staff members.

There is delegation and then their is abdication of responsibilities and I believe the manager is straddling that line very closely.

Weak managers blame, good managers resolve.

Zillah

Sounds like an absurd situation caused by a weak, irrational manager. There is an inherent conflict in holding someone responsible for the behaviour of others without giving that person any authority over them. What on Earth is she supposed to do to "motivate" them, Mrs OBumble? They seem to have contempt for her and she can't threaten them with any consequences for not doing their job. Should she start a pep-rally at their desk, with cheerleaders and balloons?

It's not necessarily an unworkable situation, and there might be things she could do to resolve the situation - like reporting the 3rd level guys to whoever does have authority over them; having a more rigid policy like after the third reminder they get reported; maybe keeping a spreadsheet of who is and isn't ignoring their paperwork or is half-assing it, and submitting that report each week, say, to their superiors - but it definitely does sound like a bit of a nightmare.

It's not a fair position to be put in but that doesn't mean your friend is necessarily handling it very well either.

ifah

I agree that the manager is being unfair blaming the friend (up to a point) - however we cannot say the manager is weak / irrational / etc as we only have a very distorted view of how they operate.

I'll re-iterate my point earlier -
your friend needs to just set up a sequence of steps that would make the completion of the task easier on both parts.
- Just request a meeting with the Team Lead / Manager of the 3rd level support team.
- Get agreement on a set of tasks & timelines that need to be met following every incident.
- Following every incident, send the template, tasklist and timeline to the Lvl 3 engineer
- Review progress
- Escalate if timelines are not being met

It's the last point that is important - your friend does not need to take responsibility for the 3rd lvl engineers not doing their job - she just has to show she has done hers. As soon as she has all her bits completed - she can escalate the issue of the 3rd lvl's not doing theirs - that was the point of getting agreement with their manager in the first place. Effectively she needs to get a SLA put in place with the team manager of the 3rd lvl engineers. If that's not being met then it's on their head - not hers.

Mrs OBumble

Zillah wrote: »

Sounds like an absurd situation caused by a weak, irrational manager. There is an inherent conflict in holding someone responsible for the behaviour of others without giving that person any authority over them. What on Earth is she supposed to do to "motivate" them, Mrs OBumble?

Google techniques for influencing without authority, and you'll see some ideas.

LegacyUser

For clarification, my friend had a break down and has not been in that place for over a year.


To give another example my friend told me about regarding this manager, (but we've not spoken about it as much as the current example)


The company is American so from what I understand some of the IT issues are "escalated" to the point where the 3rd level guys communicate with IT in America. The communication on issues is done via some system or software of some type. For some reason the 3rd level guys often forget to check this system to see if their American colleagues have replied to them.

Again instead of management telling 3rd level to do their job, a task was created for someone on 1st level support, to constantly check this system, and if someone from America replies to someone on 3rd level then its up to this person on 1st level support to notice, copy and paste the reply into an e-mail to that person on 3rd level "reminding them" to check the system.

From what I understand, everyone in the office views this task as ridiculous and embarrassing. However no one is getting any heat since 3rd level guys have to respond to these Americans and its not something they can put off like the other task. Also this task used to belong to "the person in the office everyone hates" but she went on leave so it was given to 1st level support. Again that was alarm bells for me.


There are other examples of this kinda thing but I want to keep on topic for now. I am surprised by some replies but I'm not sure I'm painting a clear picture. I had spoken to a friend of my boyfriends who also works in IT about this and he cannot believe what he is hearing when it comes to this example, and said if they got him to give out to his team members 2 levels above him for not doing a task they should be doing , which in itself would cause a breakdown of relations, but then to have his manager blame him when they don't do their job... that is a nightmare situation to be put it, almost so blatantly toxic its comical. Which is exactly what I thought too.

My friend said often her manager would give out to her because she didn't understand the techobabble the 3rd level support guys put in these reports when they finally did fill out this form after many reminders etc.

In response to ifah,


"- Just request a meeting with the Team Lead / Manager of the 3rd level support team.
- Get agreement on a set of tasks & timelines that need to be met following every incident.
- Following every incident, send the template, tasklist and timeline to the Lvl 3 engineer
- Review progress
- Escalate if timelines are not being met"


From what I understand this was already the case, still the 3rd level guys avoid filling out the form if they can get away with it, and my friend is the only one who gets in trouble over any of this. They don't respect her because they know its not them that'll get any heat, despite it being THEIR JOB. The whole thing just seems illogical. And as my friend described it, there is basically an atmosphere of avoidance of responsibility.

"It's the last point that is important - your friend does not need to take responsibility for the 3rd lvl engineers not doing their job "

She never thought she was responsible, but her manager made sure that she was.


As for techniques for influencing with out authority, I'm sure there are great ones out there. But imo it seems insane to me that it ever gets this far. Why put this on a 1st level support person who not a teamleader or a manager, but there to help fix computers. If there is a problem, go straight to the source. If A wants C to do something, and tells B to remind them. If B reminds C to do it but C still doesn't do it. Whats the point in berating B?? Why doesn't A go straight to C?

To me its seems like clearly a bad way to run an office. Everyone seems to hate doing this "Incident Resolution template" and tries to avoid doing it, so much so that all the heat is put on the quiet shy 1st level support girl.

I'm really not seeing how this is normal and correct IT office behavior but I am open to correction.

ifah

Ì think you're missing the point - I wasn't talking about making the 3rd lvl engineers responsible - I was talking about making their manager responsible. That will be part of their role - especially since you already mentioned senior management having this as a requirement. But if there is no process in place (apart from your friend being made responsible for getting these filled in) then the crap will land on your mates shoulder.

I agree it may be bad management but again - I will reiterate - we only have your friends view point on this - could her perception be biased by her experiences ? Also your others friends boyfriend's response - again, all based on a particular perspective 9which may be right or may not).

On the "task to check for responses in a system" - why not delegate this to a junior ? Many places do not have an entirely efficient helpdesk / workflow system - especially if there were mergers/splits in the past which can lead to different systems being used in different offices / companies / regions etc. Ideally the system would pop out a notification that an action is required but in this case a junior is being used to do that - probably monitoring for responses for a number of engineers, rather than just one. Sounds more efficient to me.

For Example :
Junior HD Analyst - €200 - €300 per day
Senior Engineer - €650 - €1500 per day

If the task takes 1 hour per day to complete what is essentially a paper / filing exercise then I know who I would want doing it.

LegacyUser

Well firstly, I imagine everyone's perception is biased by their experiences. My friends told me many other examples of behaviours like this however.

But to me there just seems like a really big stretch to put all the blame for 3rd level support 'not doing THEIR job' on to someone who is NOT a teamleader, manager or otherwise, but instead someone on 1st level IT support.

Regarding that second example. There was nothing that took an hour to do, there was no paper for my friend to fill out, the entire task was to 'remind 3rd level to do their job'.

I'll try to clarify better but I'm not IT but I've talked about a lot of this at length with my friend:

3rd support need to communicate with America to coordinate fixing issues.

They both use some program to do this communication in.

3rd level support can't be trusted to check to see if anyone in America has replied to their issue.

Instead of dealing with this. Someone on 1st level support had to be granted access to this system, so that they can scan through it during the day and if America replies, 1st level support copies and pastes that reply into an e-mail and sends it to their 3rd level support colleague whos sitting in the same room.

Efficient? This is utterly ridiculous to me. And seems to be entirely set up so that any mess up by 3rd level can be blamed on the peons in 1st level support.

This is the managers solution to a lot of major issues in the room. Another example was when my friend raised the bullying issue with her manager. She ignored the bullying aspect totally and decided to view it as two people fighting over calls. So her solution was to get yet another member of 1st level support to now go through all the calls and pick who does what.

This generated a whole rake of problems as you can imagine. With someone on 1st level support telling everyone above him what tasks they were to take. He ended up quitting about a year after my friend had her breakdown. There was another girl who started right after my friend and apparently SHE ended up getting all the crap she used to get, and left after 6 months.

(3 of my friends work in the same building)

My friend is still employed by them but hasn't been in the building in over a year. Is this kinda thing really considered normal?

Tiger Mcilroy

Im not sure what answer you are looking for here, its clear that the task of monitoring the admin side of the issues has been delegated to a junior member of staff and its not totally unfair to say the manager has done something wrong.

In the past i have been responsible for similar systems and its easy to generate a report that would show items that where escalated to the 3rd level guys for attention with any outstanding clearly marked and circulate this to both your friends team lead/3rd level guys including the TL after a certain time every day.

This way your friend could have displayed on a daily basis that all items were captured and escalated and then the responsibility is on the other parties.

Mrs OBumble

This is obviously a complex situation, and CuriousFriend is posting having heard one side of the story (I'd guess extensively, possibly even obsessively).

I've certainly heard lines similar to "3rd level support can't be trusted to check to see if anyone in America has replied to their issue" before - when in reality, 3rd level support are absorbed in complex tasks and easily miss a notification, the notification system cannot be changed for 2 years due to X, Y and Z, so the work-around in the meantime is to have a less competent person act as a back-up system that generates harder-to-miss notifications.

And I've met plenty of people who got into IT because they thought that by dealing with computers they wouldn't have to deal people - and were massively unhappy when they did.

Most likely the manager isn't the greatest. Most likely CuriousFriend's friend is not a good fit for the culture of the company, and perhaps not for the IT industry at all. But from what we've heard, that's about all I'd be willing to say.

Lemming

As someone who has worked as a software developer for well over a decade, across big and small companies (including a US multinational), the description as the OP has painted it is beyond insane and reeks of rotten management. Rot sets in from the top, and the people further up the chain (like 3rd level support) have seen they can get away with stuff and someone else gets blamed. There's no other factor that needs looked at here; it's simply down to rotten management.

OP; it will not get better short of managers and upper echelons of support being culled in an absolute slaughter by the American task-masters. it's not worth your friends health and well-being and tbh, there'd be better mileage in putting as much mileage between themselves and that toxic atmosphere as possible.

TLDR; your friend needs to leave for their own sake.

Cunny-Funt

Wow. I must say I was a little miffed reading some of this. I suspect there is a lot of projecting going on. But then again I imagine everyone would be guilty of that since we can only use our own experiences to guess what is going on here. We only have the OP's friends view on this.


I have been a witness to a similar toxic environment to what it seems to me the OP's friend has suffered. In a smaller IT department.

As the OP has stated, this very nearly drove the her friend to suicide.

I have witnessed this kind of thing before and in my opinion there is a very real issue in this country with this and it always traces back to two words. Bad management.

Its the managers responsibility to insure his staff are doing their job, while at the same time insuring the work environment is not toxic. Studies have shown that its not necessarily simply overworking that's pushing employees over the edge but rather, unfair treatment by management.


Its the title of this thread that really caught my attention. "Where is the line."

From what I can see there is a huge issue in this country with management not taking responsibility for their actions. There are a lot of places where once someone becomes a manager, they can do no wrong, make no mistake. If they do its the staffs fault and not the managers. And management get away with murder. Some people really should not be managers, I have to question some of the training these people get.


Now*:

*(not attacking the posters directly, just the ideas conveyed. The OP wants all opinions from what I gather so I'm not faulting the posters directly here)

I've certainly heard lines similar to "3rd level support can't be trusted to check to see if anyone in America has replied to their issue" before - when in reality, 3rd level support are absorbed in complex tasks and easily miss a notification, the notification system cannot be changed for 2 years due to X, Y and Z, so the work-around in the meantime is to have a less competent person act as a back-up system that generates harder-to-miss notifications.

This is a recipe for disaster imo. 3rd level are paid to do their complex task, and check their e-mails - system logs etc. If I started a conversation with a guy in the states, I would not leave it up to some poor bastard in first level support to sign in to my e-mails throughout the day to see if the guy replied for me. That is preposterous! Even more so to blame him because I forgot to check.

And I've met plenty of people who got into IT because they thought that by dealing with computers they wouldn't have to deal people - and were massively unhappy when they did.

I don't know about your experience, but in mine its the first level support guys who are the ones dealing with people more than anyone else. To me, it is the manager who is not dealing with people here.
It is madness to have those that are lower in the food chain checking up on another teams work on the managers behalf. There is a lack of logic here. If the OP's friend reported 3rd level support are still not doing their job, then that is when management steps and deals with it.

Simply blaming the guy on the helpdesk instead solves nothing and merely encourages a ... yes you guessed it, toxic work environment.

This is bad management 101.

Most likely CuriousFriend's friend is not a good fit for the culture of the company, and perhaps not for the IT industry at all.

I think that kind of thinking is unfair. Its 2015 in a modern office environment. Not a building site or the military from 40 years ago. This "unfair treatment/bad management is just the way it is/part of the culture" idea needs to be knocked on the head. I hate to be dramatic but there is an attitude similar to "its her own fault for being raped for wearing sexy clothes" with regards to workplace bullying and bad management in this country. Look into the statistics of suicide due to workplace mistreatment in this country.

Google techniques for influencing without authority, and you'll see some ideas.
____________________________

- Get agreement on a set of tasks & timelines that need to be met following every incident.

All sound advice in a general sense but from re-reading the OP there is more going on here.
I agree with CuriousFriend here in that as far as I am concerned, it is managements responsibility to make sure the above concepts are all ready in play before anything like this is then laid on some poor schmuck on first level to send reminders. If the 3rd level guys are not playing ball then it is on management to resolve the issue. That is why they are called management. They are the ones being paid to manage these situations. It is pointless to throw all the heat on someone on the ground level support. It solves nothing, creates stress and is frankly, avoiding the issue.

OP I have actually watched that happen before in a place I worked briefly. Except it was a guy in second level support. When I started I hardly ever spoken to him, he was a quiet guy. I soon learned a lot of people disliked the guy, as he seemed to be constantly at people to do certain tasks. Sending e-mails and the likes that people would often sneer and joke at (behind his back, there was very little social interaction between him and my colleagues.) By default a lot of the "crappy tasks" always seemed to be sent his way. He always seemed to be on edge. If anyone ever had to be kept in late, it seemed to always automatically fall to this guy. (I actually thought he wanted all the over time.)


By chance I ended up working on a project that he was helping out on which resulted in a lot of 1 on 1 time with the guy. I like to be direct with people, and I had found myself starting to get annoyed with him, following the flow of the rest of my team members and so on. As I found myself getting past his annoying, overly on edge, stressed out personality and started getting on with this chap, one day after a late days work I decided to get a couple of pints with him in the pub across the road before calling it a night and he agreed. It wasn't long before I pretty much asked him what his deal was regarding the way he is in there (I was still new so it didn't come off as harsh and blunt as I'm making it) The guy pretty much broke down in front of me.

His team was managed by a different manager, and the guy was indeed known for basically not giving 2 ****s about the place. Hardly ever seemed to be in a lot of the time. When he was, he was in early and left early and there was almost zero interaction with his team. Turns out he was doing almost the same kind of crap your friend was getting, to this guy. And it'd had been this way for years. It was essentially a cycle of blaming him for issues management should have been resolving. And then putting him this position where he had to "prove himself" to make up for it, so thus was deemed obligated to take on all these ridiculous tasks, extra work and overtime.

This guy was seriously broken and I felt terrible for him. But at the time he was telling me, I would have still been taking what he was saying with a pinch of salt. Because I was still new there and I did not know him or the situation all to well.

I kept the conversation to myself. But I'll tell you what, after that day, it wasn't long before I noticed the pattern of how things were in that place. Various incidents happened here and there that were just completely unfair. I had a few long and eye opening conversations with him after that day.
It also became extremely clear that the bad attitude some of my colleagues had towards this guy was largely due to tasks his manager was putting him up to doing regarding us.
I felt terrible for him but after our project was done we did not socialize as much anymore. He worked his balls off when I worked with him and could see he was a knowledgeable guy. I was always sure to be nice to him and just ignored and tried by best to stay out of all the negative banter people would have at his expense.

But there was a lot of crap going on in that place

His manager and mine did not get on. Indeed no one had much of an opinion of that manager. He was largely seen as useless and didn't seem to know much about IT at all. Tbh I started to think it was less that he didn't care and more that he himself indeed hated his job.

But this is the thing, someone in a job ends up hating it and performing badly, they are largely only hurting themselves. But when a manager does this it can have a huge impact on peoples lives.

So anyway, one day this poor guy didn't come in and he never came in again. I was almost sure he had topped himself at first, he was clearly depressed for a long time and I had started thinking back to the way he talked about things, and it really dawned on me that he'd probably been thinking that way for awhile.
My sister works in an office and she had told me of someone in her building who never turned up one day and it later came out it was suicide. She told me it was known in there that this was due to how he had been treated in work. So that also had my thoughts racing.

But thankfully we heard on the Monday that he was going to be off sick for the next few weeks. But he never came back. Everyone knew why he was gone but no one talked about it openly. No one ever joked about him again that I heard. Hopefully he found a much better place and is doing much better now.

Shortly after he was gone a lot of his stuff got dumped on one of his team member's and it was unbelievable how fast things went down hill for her. Everyone saw it and it was clear as day what was going on in there.
She quit 3 months later and it was no surprise. It was a horrible atmosphere to work in and a lot of people were obviously very very down. I had a short, easy ride in there compared to the rest, but thankfully I wasn't around too much longer as I ended up having needing a new job due to moving in with my GF across the country. But I heard 4 more people quit that place within that same year after I had gone. I highly doubt HR did a thing about it. As far as I know no one made a direct complaint. The attitude when it came down to it was one of "there's nothing we can do about it".


OP I hope for your friends sake she is not going back to that place.
Bad management can kill. And this is something that really his going to hit the fan in this country sooner or later.

techdiver

Cunny-Funt wrote: »

Wow. I must say I was a little miffed reading some of this. I suspect there is a lot of projecting going on. But then again I imagine everyone would be guilty of that since we can only use our own experiences to guess what is going on here. We only have the OP's friends view on this.


I have been a witness to a similar toxic environment to what it seems to me the OP's friend has suffered. In a smaller IT department.

As the OP has stated, this very nearly drove the her friend to suicide.

I have witnessed this kind of thing before and in my opinion there is a very real issue in this country with this and it always traces back to two words. Bad management.

This sums up my thoughts exactly.

I see it every day in Ireland now. Every half wit doing an MBA in their spare time and then they are "managers"! In my opinion the very people who want to get into management are the completely wrong people for the job.

Over the years I have seen all kinds in management and the problem is, that doing an MBA doesn't give you a personality transplant, which many require in order to be suitable to the job.

Also, the point about not being suitable working in IT. I didn't get that either. It's not as if IT is some special forces group in the military or wall street trading floor position. I think that attitude is very dangerous as it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy if bullying and testosterone driven work environment are encouraged/condoned.

runawaybishop

techdiver wrote: »

This sums up my thoughts exactly.

I see it every day in Ireland now. Every half wit doing an MBA in their spare time and then they are "managers"! In my opinion the very people who want to get into management are the completely wrong people for the job.

This happens world-wide, managers rise to the level of their incompetence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

imitation

The process itself is normal, level 1s tend to chase level 3s to close out tickets. The problem isnt in this process, its in the enviroment. L3 support tends to be a well apid, tricky to source specialist, who is often up to there eyes in it. As such management tend to give them leeway. Level 1 support tends to be at the other end of the scale, viewed as replacable and judged closely on stats.

It must be a very toxic place, as one user put it, if your friend couldnt give reminders to level 3 (or was expected to get results from them) without them turning on her. The fact somebody would have such bad reaction indicates an issue in that organization much larger than how the ticket system works or even one managers inattention.

billythefish99

This seems normal to me. 1st level manage the ticket throughout its lifecycle, that is their job.

techdiver

billythefish99 wrote: »

This seems normal to me. 1st level manage the ticket throughout its lifecycle, that is their job.

I think you need to read the thread again. The issue is not the task, it's the abdication of responsibility onto a junior member of staff who cannot control those above them in the food chain.

Example: I'm a senior software engineer. If a junior member of the team is asked to follow up with me on one of my tasks and I ignore them and fail to complete the tasks assigned to me, whos fault is it?

For a manager to blame the junior member of staff for my failings is bull**** to be honest. I also don't buy this "3rd level are too busy to deal with administration" crap either. I'm a senior member of staff within my team and I am responsible for completing all aspect of my assigned work, not just the tasks I deem to be suitable. If I don't have time to complete my tasks, I raise this with my management and put forward the reasons why I was not able to complete something. The net result of this is that resources and priorities are amended to suit the reality on the ground.

That is how a proper organisation works.