IT training - help?

[yoink 321]

Apparently my boss has decided that having one person responsible for the IT network isn't a good idea - and he's right. Where he's going wrong is telling me to train up one of the other staff members in half a day on how to setup, maintain and troubleshoot our network.

Hell - I'm only just figuring out this Windows Server 2003 stuff and they want me to write an 'idiots guide' in case I die or something...

where do I start? All of these people are completely IT-illiterate.... They're going to break my network as soon as I give them admin rights...


anyone had to do anything similar?
any help, advice, pointers or tips (or pre written idiots guides ) would be useful...

Will

[PhillyKev 0]

I had to do exactly that, except it was worse. I was hired to teach the only guy who was here how to manage the network, and he had been managing it for 3 years prior. The place was a freakin' mess. He had the email server and web server hanging directly off the public internet with no firewall. Cancelled the backup jobs every morning even though they were only half way done, and he had every one using the same user name and password that hadn't changed in 5 years.

Oh yeah, and everyone was in the domain admins group.

They actually hired me to "help" him. A few weeks after I started they made me his boss, and responsible for his mistakes. I tried to train him for a year, he eventually screwed up enough (killed our email server in the middle of the day) that they fired him.

Good luck.....

[metalslug 36]

As often happens, your boss is over-simplifying the complexities of IT. He needs to know that your office network is not a PlayStation console.

Never tell the boss "I cant train the guy...", rather phrase it as "The guy cant be trained..."
If the boss needs convincing, show him as many books and manuals as you can collect and explain that, in order to be reliably competent, the new staff member will have to learn most of whats in those books. Invite him to make enquiries with personnel agencies on the type of qualifications and market-related salaries that are associated with network administrators. When talking to the boss, never appear angry or frustrated, smile if you can and speak with confidence.

Start your sentences with: "So, the most logical course of action would be..." or "Prudency dictates that we should rather...".
In this way you can often get your boss to go along with your suggestions because, if he disagrees, he is indirectly showing himself to be illogical and/or imprudent. This tactic works best if other staff members are also present during the discussion.
Management will usualy agree to anything in order to avoid looking foolish in front of other staff.
Best of luck.

[CrazyIvan 0]

Hey...come to my company, they hired a SECRETARY and a SECURITY GUY to work in IT, just because these 2 individuals decided to "move up"

That's the kind of shit I have to deal with you know.

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[happythoughts 0]

Our manager (Master Degree in Fine Arts, no management, no IT experience) decided that non-technical (and non-motivated/non-educated) people should be given opportunities. I was told to facilitate this, i.e. train them to do the job.

Our secretary was to be our configuration management librarian. 'Nuff said. I assigned one of the contractors to review all that persons work. At the end of each development cycle, the contractor sits with the person and tells them what to type.

[yoink 321]

what's the IT equivalent of a whuffo?


cause that's what my boss is...

[mr2mk1g 10]

technophobe?

technically not quite right, but it'd fit till you could come up with something...

[PhillyKev 0]

ludite

[happythoughts 0]

Quote

technophobe?

technically not quite right, but it'd fit till you could come up with something...

Technophobe would be someone afraid of technology. We use techno-turnip.

[beowulf 1]

Good Luck
there are no such thing as an Idiots guide to networking.
If they don't have the interest or intelligence to pick up the networking and computer skills on their own then there is no use trying to teach them anything. I have spent lots of hours sitting in front of a computer. Not everyone has the patience or the will to stay with something till it is figured out and fixed. I am pretty obsessive when it comes to computers. If I start on a problem I can't hardly let it go till it is fixed.

[kelpdiver 2]

Quote

Apparently my boss has decided that having one person responsible for the IT network isn't a good idea - and he's right. Where he's going wrong is telling me to train up one of the other staff members in half a day on how to setup, maintain and troubleshoot our network.

Hell - I'm only just figuring out this Windows Server 2003 stuff and they want me to write an 'idiots guide' in case I die or something...

What is the state of your documentation? Do you solve the daily problems by referring to notes, or just memory? I like to document the events that keep happening. Fire fighting consume a good portion of time and it is nice to hand them off.

You can't train these backups to do anything with infrastructure, but it should be possible to set them up so they can take care of the little fires. It will take more than 4 hours to prepare such documentation, however, and for the first month after (at least) you will still be doing some handholding as they experience each incident type. At the end of it, you may have an office that will survive you going out on a lunch date.

Documenting the infrastructure so if you get hit by a bus another seasoned person can be hired and effective is a stage 2 goal. Again, hopefully you're writing down this sort of information anyway, if not in a structured way.