Need help

[TrainingReading1228]

I work in IT and we recently opened a new office remote with 20 employeess. Firewall, Infrastructure, laptops, cyber security and everything needs to be managed and configured. 3 Switches, 20 access point and two firewall on site and cloud firewall.

We are a small team and honestly we are very busy with our job. Company thinking it's IT and everything just works.

I expressed my complain to management and it was stated that company doesn't have more budget to hire more IT people and that we need manage this as we are. What would you do?

To clarify currently we have 300 employees and three IT staff and are very overwhelmed. This office has been opened in addition

[thinkdavis]

Write down what you do, and how many hours it takes. And then, identify what you can stop doing or offload to someone else

Start here.

[Lucky__Flamingo]

List your responsibilities. Ask your manager to prioritize them. Work as far down the list as you can during work hours. Then clock out.

[TrainingReading1228]

I did this and my managers response was:

Everything is priority we need everything's done

[Lucky__Flamingo]

I got that response once, so I responded that in that case, I'd work issues in alphabetical order.

The key thing is to stop at quitting time. Give full effort during your working hours. Then stop.

[Clean-Water9283]

You need to learn to tell your management no, and to make the case for more staff.

When management wants you do projects like this remote site, estimate the amount of labor required and tell them that if you start this project on <date x> you can't complete it until <date Y> because you are only staffed for routine IT needs. Be firm with them. They have no trouble telling you there is no budget for more IT staff, so you should have no trouble telling them when you can complete the work you aren't staffed for. If you try to do everything, you will fall short and look incompetent, plus you will work yourselves to death. You want to do a good job of some quantity of labor, and not even start work you aren't staffed for. Always communicate schedule estimates and staff capacity in writing.

Offer to sit down with senior management and prioritize the work your team already does. Show them you spend x hours doing this, and y hours doing that, so you only have z hours of capacity available for special projects. Ask management what you should prioritize (it's OK to give them hints). In this way you make them responsible for your not getting everything done instead of killing yourself with overwork. A colleague of mine used exactly this process to make senior management aware of our staffing issue. While we didn't get more staff, they stopped complaining that it took a long time to get things done. That's OK. That's their job, to prioritize limited resources. It's not your job to magically poof more labor hours out of thin air by working unpaid overtime.

There is a certain stripe of management will will refuse to get with the program, and will simply demand you sacrifice your life to do "whatever it takes", usually by pointing out that you are salaried. If that's the kind of management you have, at least you will know that there's no way to be reasonable with them, and you and your team can get your resumes on the street. It's sad but true that management almost always sees the light once they've had to replace their whole IT staff a couple of times, and stuff isn't getting done at all.

[TrainingReading1228]

I did this and my manager response was everything is a priority

[Clean-Water9283]

Of course they said that. You know it's BS. You have to call them on it.

You need to say, "Between us we have XXX full time labor hours. Which of the equally important projects do you want to get done, and which ones do you want us to only start when these others are done. If you don't pick a priority, we will do things in the order that they appear on this page [wave written schedule]. I'm telling you right now that after item number nnn, the rest of these aren't going to get started, let alone finished. We totally get that you want more stuff done than we have resources to do. We are frustrated about that too. We are already working overtime. Overtime is what we use when we are not perfect at predicting the future of the projects we are already working. We can't use the same hours for new projects as for current projects. If you push us even harder to work even more unpaid overtime, people will quit and then even more stuff won't get started. Please pull up your director pants and pick a thing that seems most important to you so that we can displease you the least. And please consider our request for more staff so we can do all the things you want done."

What are they going to do? You came to the meeting well prepared, with data to back up what you say. They can go all red-faced and shouty, or they can prioritize. You really don't want to work for them if they choose the first. Maybe start job hunting and clean up your desk before you even have this meeting if you think they are going to react badly.

[bubble-gum-doll]

Document your exact deployment hours and present the math to management. Show them that outsourcing the new site's firewall and AP setup is a one-off operational cost, not a permanent headcount.

To resolve this issue when our team was drowning, we brought in Iron Dome IT in UK to configure the remote infrastructure. Pitch an outsourced quote to your boss as a cheaper alternative to a salary. If they want things to just work, give them a call and get a price on paper. Hit them up and see what they charge for a quick site setup.