Sometimes when you least expect it, you get a nice surprise! The new infrastructure manager in Europe is a nice bloke, very keen to make an impression. Knows most of the buzz words and even can recognise some of the best practices, after that things tend to get a little fuzzy. He has moved from a large organsation, to a slightly smaller organisation – one that can’t actually identify whether it’s arse is punched or bored.
He has come from a retail environment to a complex product development environment, he has arrived with a large bag of luck in one hand and an empty bag of experience in the other. He used up some of his luck when the power was cut to the new headquarters building and he found that the generator switch was in the off position, just minutes before the UPS would have collapsed. After a team meeting I decided that my initial impression was in fact completely wrong, this bloke was then condemned to the Muppet category from that point onwards.
Normally I’d give people the benefit of the doubt, but in this case I think I’ll make an exception. Why? Well I have been kind of landed in it, I’m working in an environment where there is absolutely no local knowledge – what about me? Well my original task was to shut down the data centre, and relocate it – that bit for the most part has been done. The new infrastructure manager, well he wants to assign me to something else – namely general support of the business unit in the UK even although I don’t actually have the required skill set.
Still I did get a one week trip to the south of Europe to find that out, again I find myself in the company of muppets working in the IT world – the worrying thing about this time is the fact that they are in charge of the systems not just using them.