{"id":10540,"date":"2018-03-21T12:13:11","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T01:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/?p=10540"},"modified":"2018-03-21T12:13:11","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T01:13:11","slug":"10540-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2","title":{"rendered":"Nine Signs Your IT Person May Be Incompetent"},"content":{"rendered":"

In any organization, your IT gal or guy is important. They’re the person you go to when your computer freezes up, or you need a file recovered. But not all of them are made equal.<\/p>\n

If you hear them uttering these words, it’s a warning sign that you might have a flakier-than-normal IT ‘professional’ on your hands.<\/p>\n

1. “Ignore those errors.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Errors come up for a reason. It’s because the makers of the hardware, software or service is trying to tell you something is wrong.<\/p>\n

2. “We’re going to take the chassis cover off your machine so it gets better ventilation.”<\/h4>\n

A time-honored solution for an at-home PC gamer who doesn’t want to fork out for a decent cooling system. A highly questionable decision for a workplace desktop or a server.<\/p>\n

3. “Let me just email you both the username and password. Or wait, do you have Skype?”<\/h4>\n

Transferring your emails via an insecure channel is a lazy move. This is one of those “it’s fine until it isn’t, and then it really<\/em> isn’t” things.<\/p>\n

4. “I hate it when that happens.”<\/h4>\n

… So why does it keep happening?<\/p>\n

5. “I don’t know what the problem is, so I can’t fix it.”<\/h4>\n

It’s not expected that an IT professional knows every single error code for every piece of software in your organization off the top of their head. What is<\/em> expected is that they google it.<\/p>\n

6. “I was reading through your emails. I see you’re going to a party this weekend.”<\/h4>\n

Just because an Administrator can access all your emails and folders doesn’t mean they should be without just cause.<\/p>\n

7. “I deleted those files to free up server space. What do you mean, you were still using them?”<\/h4>\n

Those video files they thought weren’t business related? Turns out they were part of the company’s new marketing campaign. Uh-oh, spaghettios<\/a>.<\/p>\n

8. “Uh, we don’t have backups of that data. It’s gone forever.”<\/h4>\n

Translation: “I really should have put in an automated backup plan to make sure that never happens, but I didn’t, and now you’ve got to suffer for it.”<\/p>\n

9. “Those backups of your data were corrupted. It’s gone forever.”<\/h4>\n

Translation: “I should have run test restores<\/a> of those backups, but I didn’t, and then I assumed it would all turn out okay, and it didn’t.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wondering if your company’s IT staff are unusual or not? Here’s some warning signs to look out for, as written by other IT professionals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[634,270,650],"class_list":["post-10540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured","tag-humor","tag-it"],"yoast_head":"\nNine Warning Signs Your IT Staff Might Be Incompetent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Wondering if your company's IT staff are incompetent or not? Here's some warning signs to look out for, as written by other IT professionals.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nine Warning Signs Your IT Staff Might Be Incompetent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wondering if your company's IT staff are incompetent or not? Here's some warning signs to look out for, as written by other IT professionals.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cyber Resilience Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-03-21T01:13:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/03\/1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"852\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Linus Chang\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Linus Chang\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Linus Chang\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/523a9a01769da254de228dbd4b1328d3\"},\"headline\":\"Nine Signs Your IT Person May Be Incompetent\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-03-21T01:13:11+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2\"},\"wordCount\":386,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/03\/1.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"featured\",\"humor\",\"IT\"],\"articleSection\":[\"News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2\",\"name\":\"Nine Warning Signs Your IT Staff Might Be Incompetent\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/10540-2#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/03\/1.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-03-21T01:13:11+00:00\",\"description\":\"Wondering if your company's IT staff are incompetent or not? 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He founded BackupAssist in 2002 \u2014 making him one of the longest-standing voices in Windows backup and data protection \u2014 and has spent the decades since talking to IT administrators around the world about what actually goes wrong, and why. His interest in data loss isn't abstract. Early in his career, he was working at the Monash University help desk when a student came in with a floppy disk that wouldn't read. They tried everything. None of their drives could read it either. The disk held her entire PhD dissertation \u2014 years of work \u2014 and it was the only copy. She broke down in tears. There was nothing he could do. Five years later, he wrote the first version of BackupAssist. Linus holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and has held Microsoft Certified Solution Developer and Sun Certified Java Programmer credentials. More recently, he has completed digital forensics and cyber-security courses through the Black Hat Conference. He has spoken on information security and cryptography at Infosecurity Europe, addressed politicians and policymakers at Australian Parliament House, presented to SMB IT administrators at the IT Pro Experts Conference, and served as a guest lecturer to Cyber Security master's students at the University of Melbourne. On this blog, Linus writes about backup strategy and the technical side of cyber-resilience \u2014 drawing on 24 years of product development and direct conversation with the IT professionals BackupAssist is built for. [Connect with Linus on LinkedIn](https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/linuschang\/)\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/author\/linus-chang\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Nine Warning Signs Your IT Staff Might Be Incompetent","description":"Wondering if your company's IT staff are incompetent or not? 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He founded BackupAssist in 2002 \u2014 making him one of the longest-standing voices in Windows backup and data protection \u2014 and has spent the decades since talking to IT administrators around the world about what actually goes wrong, and why. His interest in data loss isn't abstract. Early in his career, he was working at the Monash University help desk when a student came in with a floppy disk that wouldn't read. They tried everything. None of their drives could read it either. The disk held her entire PhD dissertation \u2014 years of work \u2014 and it was the only copy. She broke down in tears. There was nothing he could do. Five years later, he wrote the first version of BackupAssist. Linus holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and has held Microsoft Certified Solution Developer and Sun Certified Java Programmer credentials. More recently, he has completed digital forensics and cyber-security courses through the Black Hat Conference. 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