Manager: ok, draft a notification so I can send corporate-wide email.
Me: … shouldn’t I start working on the fix?
Manager: [gets pissed]
Me: [spends 3 minutes drafting an email]
Me: [starts working on a fix]
2.7 minutes later
Director calls. Spends 10 minutes telling me how important this is, why it needs to be my primary focus, asks for me to give them a quick breakdown so they can inform the AVP.
Me: [goes back to working]
104 seconds later
AVP stops by my desk. Asks why it hasn’t been fixed yet. Spends a few minutes telling me how critical this outage is and needs an explanation so they can keep the VP up to speed on the status. Total time 12 minutes.
Me: [tries to start working again]
3.1 minutes later
VP calls me into the conference room for an emergency. Asks me why they were pulled out of a meeting and how bad it looks on their division this has been down so long. Demands a detailed breakdown for leadership, total time 16 minutes.
Me: [tries to start working again to fix things]
470 seconds later
SVP comes by my desk and demands to know why production is down, but gets everything incorrect and misstates literally everything about what’s wrong. Says how unprofessional it is this hasn’t been fixed yet and how it’s costing the company money they can never get back. Chewed out for 11 minutes before I can get back to work.
Me: [tries getting back to work to bring production back up again]
Director tells me to join a conference call with disaster committee to give updates so they can triage and plan for outages across the company. Call lasts 19 minutes.
Me: [finally able to get back to working on the fix, production has been down for almost 1.5 hours]
Manager walks up to my desk. Said I estimated an hour to bring it back up and demands to know why it’s still down for 90 minutes and says this is definitely going on my review.
Every single person in this story above you in the org chart catastrophically failed at their job; but I would say your direct manager deserves most of the blame.
The main priority of everyone directly managing individual contributors should be to make sure they can all do their respective job with as little interference as possible. Asking you to waste time by drafting an e-mail for them (aka doing their job for them) is bad enough. But the real failure is not shielding you from all those other nosy idiots afterwards.
Really hope they pay you well enough to make dealing with this shameless display of incompetence across all levels worth it for you.
I’ve had a similar situation. In my case it was people helpfully stopping by to suggest things, and my boss telling me to needed to work on something else that was less critical. Then I was like, hey, I’m going to telework because I can’t focus here… Oh no, you need to be here…
Me: [Lets direct manager know Production is down]
Manager: How long will it take to fix?
Me: maybe an hour or so
Manager: ok, draft a notification so I can send corporate-wide email.
Me: … shouldn’t I start working on the fix?
Manager: [gets pissed]
Me: [spends 3 minutes drafting an email]
Me: [starts working on a fix]
2.7 minutes later
Director calls. Spends 10 minutes telling me how important this is, why it needs to be my primary focus, asks for me to give them a quick breakdown so they can inform the AVP.
Me: [goes back to working]
104 seconds later
AVP stops by my desk. Asks why it hasn’t been fixed yet. Spends a few minutes telling me how critical this outage is and needs an explanation so they can keep the VP up to speed on the status. Total time 12 minutes.
Me: [tries to start working again]
3.1 minutes later
VP calls me into the conference room for an emergency. Asks me why they were pulled out of a meeting and how bad it looks on their division this has been down so long. Demands a detailed breakdown for leadership, total time 16 minutes.
Me: [tries to start working again to fix things]
470 seconds later
SVP comes by my desk and demands to know why production is down, but gets everything incorrect and misstates literally everything about what’s wrong. Says how unprofessional it is this hasn’t been fixed yet and how it’s costing the company money they can never get back. Chewed out for 11 minutes before I can get back to work.
Me: [tries getting back to work to bring production back up again]
Director tells me to join a conference call with disaster committee to give updates so they can triage and plan for outages across the company. Call lasts 19 minutes.
Me: [finally able to get back to working on the fix, production has been down for almost 1.5 hours]
Manager walks up to my desk. Said I estimated an hour to bring it back up and demands to know why it’s still down for 90 minutes and says this is definitely going on my review.
The number of times I have posted this at work because… well you know why.
It’s always DNS or the WAF at my current place
It’s not DNS
There’s no way it’s DNS…
“Waaaffff!” Is what gets yelled when Warf irritates a Bostonian.
Bat’leths? Wicked cool kid.
DNS is the first thing I check.
So hell IS real
So I wasn’t expecting to be assaulted this early in the morning but apparently you’re my coworker.
Fucking this.
Every single person in this story above you in the org chart catastrophically failed at their job; but I would say your direct manager deserves most of the blame.
The main priority of everyone directly managing individual contributors should be to make sure they can all do their respective job with as little interference as possible. Asking you to waste time by drafting an e-mail for them (aka doing their job for them) is bad enough. But the real failure is not shielding you from all those other nosy idiots afterwards.
Really hope they pay you well enough to make dealing with this shameless display of incompetence across all levels worth it for you.
I’ve had a similar situation. In my case it was people helpfully stopping by to suggest things, and my boss telling me to needed to work on something else that was less critical. Then I was like, hey, I’m going to telework because I can’t focus here… Oh no, you need to be here…
Great, let’s work Saturday. Sigh.
You show your manager your call log.
All those things are logged for a reason. Use it.