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> Just "have no idea, datacenter team is working on it. You can ask them?" has done wonders for my mental health and job satisfaction Never seems to have much

> Just "have no idea, datacenter team is working on it. You can ask them?" has done wonders for my mental health and job satisfaction Never seems to have much benefit for me, because I'm typically the one who answers the phone/email/etc, and "the datacenter team" never does. No one is happy with that, and I still get the calls/email/messages, demanding the 'fix' or ETA. I would rather things be more under my control, because I inevitably am still 'blamed' when things go wrong.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago
But the thing is in most of the companies you don't have full control over the whole stack. Even if you have "full control" over the database, you don't have control over networking, firewall, OS, "security" patching, VMs, Docker, Kubernetes, Load balancers, vendors managing parts of the infra, internet provider, hosting provider ... Not even datacenter team may have control over all of it, but at least that's their job and their area of expertise. And receiving a call and telling: "here's datacenter emergency phone, please ping them" or forwarding mail to datacenter team with "can you give ETA to the business" is an order of magnitude easier than trying to concentrate and resolve the actual problem while being interrupted every 5 minutes and not having required level of access to actually do it, even if the knowledge exists. Though in most of the companies, business will not call you, but some poor business analyst or project/product manager, which will learn quickly to keep you out of the loop and don't waste anyone's time if you are consistent with answering "have no idea, ask datacenter guys".
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  > And receiving a call and telling: "here's datacenter emergency phone, please ping them" or forwarding mail to datacenter team with "can you give ETA to the business" is an order of magnitude easier than trying to concentrate and resolve the actual problem while being interrupted every 5 minutes and not having required level of access to actually do it, even if the knowledge exists. You seem to have exceptional customers. Like the parent comment, my customers wouldn't have that. I'm their point of contact, and they want me to do the legwork and provide them with updates. They want to complain to me directly, often citing that they have enough problems with their business to care about problems my business is facing. We'd be out of business if we insisted they talk to our vendors directly. They would straight up laugh in our faces as they fired us, and frankly, I'm with them, since I wouldn't put up with that from our vendors either.
  - tut-urut-utut 5y ago
    That's a valid point, looks like we are not in the same role. I work mostly on internal software in a big "enterprise". My customers are mostly internal customers (marketing, sales, ...) but I have a luxury of having a business analyst, project manager or product owner that receive calls from them, so I don't need to explain anything directly to customers. In rare cases that some C-level break through and complain directly to me, it's usually easy to explain that if he wants a solution or an estimate fast, he should be dealing with datacenter team, since I don't have any leverage upon them, and he can complain directly to the IT-Infrastructure Director, to whom I don't even have direct contact.
    - markus_zhang 5y ago
      Reason why I transfer from BA to data :P
jenkstom 5y ago
Set and maintain strong, healthy adult boundaries. If somebody blames you for something that you don't control then call them out on it. You don't even have to be mean, just point it out. There's a lot of legal precedence for "But (s)he allowed me to abuse him(her)!" as an excuse for abuse. Honestly that's the best thing you can do for on-the-job sanity. I understand that people feel they have a right to abuse others, but at some point you really don't have to take it.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago

But the thing is in most of the companies you don't have full control over the whole stack. Even if you have "full control" over the database, you don't have control over networking, firewall, OS, "security" patching, VMs, Docker, Kubernetes, Load balancers, vendors managing parts of the infra, internet provider, hosting provider ... Not even datacenter team may have control over all of it, but at least that's their job and their area of expertise. And receiving a call and telling: "here's datacenter emergency phone, please ping them" or forwarding mail to datacenter team with "can you give ETA to the business" is an order of magnitude easier than trying to concentrate and resolve the actual problem while being interrupted every 5 minutes and not having required level of access to actually do it, even if the knowledge exists. Though in most of the companies, business will not call you, but some poor business analyst or project/product manager, which will learn quickly to keep you out of the loop and don't waste anyone's time if you are consistent with answering "have no idea, ask datacenter guys".

stronglikedan 5y ago
> And receiving a call and telling: "here's datacenter emergency phone, please ping them" or forwarding mail to datacenter team with "can you give ETA to the business" is an order of magnitude easier than trying to concentrate and resolve the actual problem while being interrupted every 5 minutes and not having required level of access to actually do it, even if the knowledge exists. You seem to have exceptional customers. Like the parent comment, my customers wouldn't have that. I'm their point of contact, and they want me to do the legwork and provide them with updates. They want to complain to me directly, often citing that they have enough problems with their business to care about problems my business is facing. We'd be out of business if we insisted they talk to our vendors directly. They would straight up laugh in our faces as they fired us, and frankly, I'm with them, since I wouldn't put up with that from our vendors either.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  That's a valid point, looks like we are not in the same role. I work mostly on internal software in a big "enterprise". My customers are mostly internal customers (marketing, sales, ...) but I have a luxury of having a business analyst, project manager or product owner that receive calls from them, so I don't need to explain anything directly to customers. In rare cases that some C-level break through and complain directly to me, it's usually easy to explain that if he wants a solution or an estimate fast, he should be dealing with datacenter team, since I don't have any leverage upon them, and he can complain directly to the IT-Infrastructure Director, to whom I don't even have direct contact.
  - markus_zhang 5y ago
    Reason why I transfer from BA to data :P

jenkstom 5y ago

Set and maintain strong, healthy adult boundaries. If somebody blames you for something that you don't control then call them out on it. You don't even have to be mean, just point it out. There's a lot of legal precedence for "But (s)he allowed me to abuse him(her)!" as an excuse for abuse. Honestly that's the best thing you can do for on-the-job sanity. I understand that people feel they have a right to abuse others, but at some point you really don't have to take it.