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atoav | on: Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]
No it does not need to come from the outside. If you're an underfunded IT department and your network has an issue twice a week, you will get that funding. If you're heroically obscuring the fact that things are falling apart you won't. That means even if you could somehow, heroically fix it, it isn't perceived as such if nobody ever felt the problem and saw you fix it.

This is a pain signal. Some IT dude saying things are crap in every meeting is not.

friendzis | parent | next
> This is a pain signal. Some IT dude saying things are crap in every meeting is not.

More often than not it is some IT dude observing network crap-out once a month, performing analysis, noticing an upward trend and then saying in every meeting that things are crap and there will be issues twice a week in some time.

> If you're an underfunded IT department and your network has an issue twice a week, you will get that funding.

More often than not, if the IT department is already neglected they will not get that funding. Things will be delayed until the crap outs eventually actually happen twice a week and then some external heroic consultants will be hired to fix the issue underfunded IT department "could not".

order-matters | root | parent | next
IT doesnt control the funding so at that point its not an issue of awareness but a management decision to live with this problem and focus funding elsewhere

more often than not, many things in the business are on fire and underfunded at the same time. you can get recognition for your work without the problem being permanently solved the right way, and it may not result in more funding but peopel will think of you for new opportunities that pop up later as someone who is reliable.

if you dont think the recognition will happen and youre just burning out solving these problems then stop solving them. new problem pops up thats outside your job description, its not your problem. generally though if youre working for someone like that anything you do is a lose-lose

jt2190 | root | parent
How did you make the illogical leap to “could not”?

Repeatedly requesting time/budget to fix an ongoing issue is a requirement of any half-decent manager. If they’re reporting issues then just smiling blankly when asked “what can we do about it?” they’ve failed their basic job duty.

bluGill | parent | next
The problem is sometimes management knows who the heroes are and so by not fixing things they know you are not competent. Thus letting things bubble up isn't always a good plan. It is really hard when you are on the bottom to know which case things are.
thx67 | parent
The problem is that management witnesses the pain, but the response isn't to adjust behavior, it is then to punish the limb where the pain originated from. The reason that people pull heroics is also because the organization isn't healthy, and cannot reflect on its actions. Papering over organizational flaws is a symptom of a larger, often unseen problem. If it was healthy, someone would have already said, "hey, I think we need to work on this networking component" and it would have been looked at.

Pain propagation, to use the corpus metaphor isn't enough.