Argh....

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

I just got emailed three pages of debug errors along with a note from my boss:

"Kiz - can you phone over to the call center and walk this enroller through recreating this application?"

I IM my boss:

Kiz: "I've never seen this enrollment software before. How would you like me to go about that?"
Boss: "Oh, well it should be easy. Just VNC into his machine and watch along while he recreates it, it's probably just a bad date."

Uh.

If it's just a bad date:

a) Train the damn enrollers. Don't put in urgent after-hours help requests.
b) Put some damn error handling into the program so it says "Invalid date" instead of three pages of debug errors.

Comments

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Oh, the joy.

[phyrewall.livejournal.com]

Are you doing tech support from home? If so, please contact me. I'm currently in the Army doing tech support, but thank God I only have 2 years left. I'd love to work from home so I can take care of the kids while my wife persues her dream career.

Thanks!

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Not exactly. I'm doing IT support, which is sorta like a level of magnitutde above tech support.

Tech support: "My laptop's touchapd doesn't work."
IT support: "Mobody can connect to the internal websites, even though the servers are up. The network admin's out of town, and the VP of IT wants results yesterday. And while you're at it, can you throw together a system for synchronizing webserver 1 to webserver 2 every night, then archiving all the files on the webserver which are over 45 days old each Sunday?"

[phyrewall.livejournal.com]

Ok, so I bow to your leetness...

but I cast "magic missiles" in return.

I can totally wing the "IT support" that's what I do for these noobs in the Army. Anyhoo, my credentials aside, I just want an insight on "working at home" as an "IT professional". Can you shed some light?

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

What sort of insight do you mean?

Yes, I am an IT professional working from home. Most IT tasks in our company are performed over networks anyway, so there's no reason we can't work from home... other than the prejudices of certain managers who believe that anyone that doesn't have an office and somebody riding herd over them, is inherently destined to spend most of their time slacking.

It's really a win-win, as it means my company doesn't have to provide an office in one of their facilities, and doesn't have to supply my equipment. But due to the prejudices listed above, this isn't exactly what I've come to consider a common setup. Finding a job like this is pretty much a one in a million shot, with thousands of people competing for it every time one opens up. I was lucky; I have a friend who's the Senior VP of IT of this company, and she had an opening come up right when she knew I was looking to get out of call center work.