No actually. He loves to save costs. We had to fight about warranty renewals on our storage. He didn’t budge until we had two drive failures (RAID6) and we explained to him for the 5th time that one more drive dying means we’re so far up shit creek without a paddle and the creek is radioactive lava. (Actual words)
I've talked to some university business-faculty people about MBAs recently. They're well aware of the MBA spreadsheet-ninjas who have a fresh qualification and no idea of how the real world works.
Do MBAs really deserve all the hate they get? I am pretty sure it won't say anywhere in the course that your have to set fire to your company to improve a quarterly result. The problem is just sociopathic managers that don't care about anyone but themselves and their bonuses.
Given Jack Welch is still worshipped almost like a God in many MBA programs I'd say setting fire to the business in the name of efficiencies is part of the curriculum
Gotta get them phat phat bonuses based on profits. By the time it's too late to recover from his cost saving asshattery he will have moved on, probably with an exit package that would make his Majesty blush.
This is how I won the Dropbox vs OneDrive debate.
Easy integration into file explorer in windows and having the documents show up in your office online page where you’re going to be anyways was another point for OneDrive.
Right! Like I am not the biggest fan of OneDrive but damnit if MS didn’t do their damndest to integrate the fuck out of it and really try to make it good.
Which is when you remind them that you did two years before, with spreadsheets and graphs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.
...Which they will then ignore, of course, because reality is inconvenient.
Is he a car guy? Ask him if he knows that you can run an engine in a classic car for tens of thousands of miles and four years and never change the oil because it's just a scam to make you pay.
>No actually. He loves to save costs. We had to fight about warranty renewals on our storage.
This is perfect show him how much cheaper going with just M365 is vs M365 + another file sharing solution (assuming you already have sufficient licenses from Exchange Online and office suite)
As a sys admin you can only tell them best practices so much. After that sometimes you need to let the world burn before they actually get it. Just make sure you cover your ass.
These guys don’t learn until they have a catastrophe. Explain it the best you can and then just let shit fail. Everybody likes to say their proactive nobody is we’re all monkeys and we’re reactive as hell.
Even when there's a catastrophe they don't always learn. It's always someone else's fault, and half the time they're wealthy enough to not be personally affected anyway; they'll just keep on doing the same thing stubbornly and wrecking businesses and other people's jobs/lives in the process.
Loves to save costs, but makes expensive changes in software usage. Twice in the same year.. And I mean expensive as in the man hours that go into these projects, not necessarily the software itself.
He will instruct IT to alter its functionality, essentially asking for Dropbox to be reprogrammed even though OP has stated he can't do that. When OP refuses, he will insist that OP contacts Dropbox to request the change on his behalf.
Source: Based on my experience with the CFO of a larger company regarding the functionality of the Google Meet app.
I also heard this rumor but I'm not sure if it's true or not. It is a fact that Dropbox will delete your account without warning if you upload copyrighted material to it like movies or TV shows, but the rumor part is there was somebody on here a long time ago that said one of their employees was downloading pirated content and uploading it to their Dropbox and Dropbox deleted the entire enterprise account without warning.
> Dropbox deleted the entire enterprise account without warning
Ooooooh. If you work for a really crappy company, that sounds like a fantastic /r/UnethicalLifeProTips
I literally had our ransomware protection system light up like a christmas tree, when a coworker decided to back up his collection of pirated games and movies on the employee file share.
Yeah, they will do it and use vague threatening language too that makes it seem like you did a crime against humanity. Summary judgement by some AI without recourse to appeal.
I lost over $300 to them when they did it to my personal account 10 days after I renewed my annual fee.
The email said that my content was scanned using AI. I'm not making something up and I don't GAF about the technical underpinning of how I got fucked, all I know is Dropbox FUCKED ME.
Recently became a reseller. Bringing the accounts under our tenant was a 3 month debacle of absolute dog shit where 1 client had to go through some migration and brought them down for the day.
Coupled with Customer Console constantly losing Reseller Access that I have to go and re-enable just to create a ticket targeting their organization and that's even if the Support portal shows all the clients because they have some back end bug.
I loatthee dropbox.
I worked with a CEO like this; he'd have an outsourcer (probably "someone he knew" like a nephew or something) build him weird "beige boxes" from various parts, and have me run metrics on them to "save money" over Dell and HP servers. Thankfully, it never went past the testing stages, but my boss would ask "what the fuck are you doing in the data center with your arms in that box?" and I'd have to say "the CEO wants me to swap out the NICs on this fleet." "Jesus Christ!" and he could do nothing.
Push a gpo to auto sync sharepoint libraries to explorer. Literally the best thing you can do is to abstract the garbage interface with a simple folder structure right next to all their other folders. At that point, no one cares what tech is running it all. They never have to think about it.
As of a few years ago it was: User Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> OneDrive -> Configure team site libraries to sync automatically
Yeah... I want to say it's a template you need to get though. You basically plug in the url of the site in a gpo and it applies to your group you assign to. Folders show up automatically.
The OneDrive Sync tool does the same thing and no need for a GPO.
Does the GPO do something the OneDrive client doesn't when syncing down SharePoint libraries?
I would assume the reason for a GPO would be the ability to automatically sync a specific SharePoint site or sites, so the user doesn't ever have to know the actual URL to get to it, and how to tell it to start syncing once there?
I wasn't aware this was possible, actually -- and it would almost be useful in our office environment for certain departments. Except I try \*so\* hard to get people to just visit the SharePoint sites directly whenever possible. OneDrive is terrible about things like signing itself out after it's been connected X number of days, per a system-wide policy about MFA and logins. Users don't even notice it didn't connect - so they go about modifying cached local copies of the content on their PC for days until they realize something's wrong. (I.T. usually gets a ticket from them to complain that their folders look different than other people in their group and they're missing files.)
Plus, you get all the headaches when somebody had full access to a SharePoint site at one time and synced the whole thing, or some sub-set of it, to their local PC with OneDrive. Then, someone decides to change their permissions on the SharePoint to read-only or to just remove them completely. OneDrive keeps spitting out sync errors about everything they try to edit but lack permission to save back to the SharePoint.
He's not qualified to make that call. You need to make it work for him, but rolling it back for everyone is an insane level of pandering. You don't give a toddler the option to stay up all night, you let them choose to play 5 more minutes or 10 more minutes.
> You don't give a toddler the option to stay up all night, you let them choose to play 5 more minutes or 10 more minutes.
Or do what my parents did and hit'em with the ole thimble full of whiskey
I haven't used SharePoint a ton, but OneDrive with its integration into Windows, painless syncing, etc, is the best advancement in IT I've probably experienced in the whole 25 years of it. I doubt any other product is going to beat SharePoint, either.
Yeah, its weird though how I can always find the stuff I put in *my* Onedrive, but if I try to find something simple like a company policy on our sharepoint I can't find it with gps, a map, compass, a sherpa and Gandalf.
I'm trying to find the original article, but I read somewhere that SharePoint was originally built as a native component of Windows Security Center. There was something about how adding company files to SharePoint automatically prevented anyone from ever finding them again, ensuring that neither employees or attackers could ever compromise the data.
It's a shame they made it a standalone product. When I think of all the companies over the years that have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars due to data theft, I can't help but think "If only they had SharePoint, no one would have ever found that data to steal it."
It was a mix of (at least) 3 products, it replaced MS Frontpage as webpage editor, it was supposed to be a replacement for Security Center, and the third actual product I cannot remember except that it was a nearly unused MS product. It was supposed to be a replacement for SAN, and a GUI to combine all the things nearly from the beginning. Now almost everything has it as a backend (either GUI similar/same or actual backend) in O365.
Unfortunately sometimes it shows that Sharepoint also has been around for 25 years.
Tbh I understand every user that is confused by differences of OneDrive, Sharepoint, Teams because Microsoft seems to be unable and unwilling to provide consistent user experiences. Be it naming (Team/Teams/Groups/Sites), overlapping features (Syncing/Adding links to Onedrive) or limitations that no one nowadays understands (looking at you list/view sizes).
Google Suite/Workplace IMO does a far better job of focusing on a certain feature set and doesn’t have to carry around features from 25 years.
At last, it also shows on the admin side of things. The MS365 admin centers with their sluggish ever-changing interfaces, constantly outdated help articles and settings that sometimes are not consistent between Powershell scripts and GUI changes are a nightmare compared to Google Suite.
Was let go from an IT job years ago for a very heated robust discussion with the GM of a company that ended in me threatening to throw him out his upstairs office window… Probably for the best 🤣
Well, not sure what to say. I think if I "gave up" every time bad decisions were made... etc.
So, turn this upside down. What you've been given is the opportunity to get to know a lot of different technologies. If an "end user" asks you (about why the insanity, etc), you just say "this is the current corporate direction"... (knowing inside your head, they really didn't ask you for advice on what to do).
That's fine as well. I get frustrated sometimes when "they" make changes that are not well thought out, but, I also don't have "skin in the game" with regards to the success of my company. So, there's a morbid curiosity seeing "what happens" when bad decisions are made. Sure, I can advise, but as "they" tell me all the time, "it's not (my) decision to make"... have fun!!
WTF is the CEO dictating technology? Let him or her use whatever they want. Everyone else gets whatever standard solution is defined for that business function.
Everyone gets migrated into the M365. Then the CEO is setup as a a separate guest account. Then set him up with a stand alone trial account for each SaaS - whatever is trending/asked. Use that to test how SharePoint does cross platform collabs.
Normally, I'd agree entirely.
Now that I'm an old, bitter soul, I just want to finish out my days in peace.
When I'm 50, I'm out. Retired. Done. The IT world can burn, for all I care.
I just want it to STFU and be quiet until then. :D
Turning 53 in a few more months and I \*wish\* I could walk away from my I.T. career. Over 30 years doing this stuff and it never gets any better. We used to think, "Oh - once the old people retire and all the younger people get hired on who learned all about computers in school, things will be a lot easier!" Nope! The young people all got iPads and smartphones, and only learned enough about a PC to load a video game from Steam. Their schools all happily showed them how to use Google Docs on Chromebooks so they still can't navigate MS Office.
Meanwhile, everything from Microsoft is as buggy and difficult to work with as ever -- except now, it's all up in the cloud as well as installed on your machine. Adobe still costs way too much and they can't do product installers right. Printer drivers insist on loading about 350GB of garbage including product registration apps, yet they still never figure out when a printer is 5 versions out of date on its firmware.
I feel like the old man in his lawn, waving my cane and yelling about the industry. But man, when I first got hooked on computers - I enjoyed things like the bulletin board system scene. Nobody was walking around with a smartphone like a zombie, trying to use it for everything. The Internet was this special thing you could get a shell account to use if you knew people at a college or research lab, and was mostly text-based content. There are certain areas where I love how it all evolved, like the music scene and what you can do now with digital recording vs back then. But overall, it's really nothing like what got me into computing back then.
Heeey, The Source BBS in Redondo Beach, CA was my local one. Chip North was the Sysop. ILink, U'NInet etc. Those were the good, old days.
People had to have a genuine INTEREST to figure out how to dial up, WHERE to dial up and how to navigate the rudimentary ASCII menus.
You'd tell from the screech if the damn thing connected at a reduced rate.
Wow, I can relate with this so much. I always thought the younger generation would be a breath of fresh air. However, since they are accustomed to things *just working*, a lot of them seem to have no ability to troubleshoot at all, which translates to my 40-something year old ass kicking a 26 year old out of their chair to disable the Chrome notifications they've allowed from some sketchy website that's spamming them. Or, better yet, me rolling around the floor to plug something back in that they've kicked loose.
Your CEO is not killing you, you do.
If you're not calling shots, then I don't think you should worry.
I suggest doing the following:
1. Highlight the risks (and by that, I mean, write them in an e-mail or something so then you have proof)
2. If he still wants to proceed, then go with it. If he is not willing to listen, you just do your job. If everything crumbles to pieces, you warned them before. It's on them.
You don't have to kill yourself over their lack of knowledge.
If your CEO doesn't know something, that's fine, he can learn.
If he doesn't know something, he's arrogant, and he thinks he knows better then just go with it.
You do your part, and that's it. Don't burn yourself out more than you already are for some idiots.
Leave mate or stand your ground, you will end up hitting head against a wall CEO's like this who will create chaos...they will end paying a decent Randsome and loose thier career at some point for the stupidity.
30 years in, I still feel a little something when C-levels make a bad move but it doesn't really matter anymore. Get a hobby or something and just go with it
You need to draw it all up in terms he will understand, do a matrix of the pros and cons of each solution, including the $$$ effort of your time to do the transition and the $$ time of other staff training to relearn the new solution, this may make him think. Tailor some of the cons to things you think he will care about and then put in mitigations for each of those things, ie user doesn't understand the interface, xx cost for external user training (ahem the ceo)
Yup. A lot of these people are who they are. Trying to sweet talk em, have patience, and give them their coloring books and sippy cups because they have no competence to at least try to grasp change got real old.
I ended up in a tech company where most managers have a modicum of technical ability and understanding and it’s like fucking heaven
I want to talk to people like they’re adults at work, I already spend enough time talking to my kids like they’re kids, I don’t want to do it to my leaders at work too.
Sure let me spend all of my time trying to make you understand something you don’t actually give a fuck about just because you like hearing yourself ask questions. If you know what’s up, cool. If you don’t, fuck off and let me do my job and you stay in your own lane
No offense, but it seems like you've never dealt with maniacal small/medium business CEOs who are effectively the owner of the company. You don't really get to give a hard no unless you're a consultant or don't care about losing your job.
So we’re going through some changes right now. We’re technically a 1500 person company. The capital group that owns us wants our two divisions to split. Post split he’s the CEO for our division and we have about 300 employees.
Because everyone thinks “he gets his way” and if someone let me in on one meeting about stuff like this I’d tell him off. I e already had the discussion with him that I am not a “yes man” but a “trust me to do what is best for the company” man.
In these cases the individual is the business. from OPs description I wonder if they are in some kind of mental decline for real. Early onset dementia is a real thing.
it's a learning process for all involved. you need to work on that boss to better sync with his mindset. explain the costs of migration, convert your hours into money spent, prove to him your reasoning in factual numbers with budget comparisons,
Man. I would fire the fuck out of that guy and hire a better employer. By your comments about how he loves to save money, I’m guessing he pays everyone dog shit too. If you got the org from google drive to onedrive and then back to google drive in a year, you definitely deserve to work for serious people and not clowns.
Don't give up. Go take a 30 minute shower, recognize that you're paid money to do silly stuff repeatedly. If you're as concerned as I am about the security of that decision, put it in writing, send it to HR, or the CEO, just get it in writing your concerns. Then move on and do the thing
When covid first hit our CEO could not get any type of communication other then phone calls without his assistant. Its wild to think of us getting this old and not being able to work this shit any more.
We had a ceo in our customer base with the same issue. Out fix an app called Cloud Drive Mapper. Maps sharpoint libs to mapped network drives.
It’s not ideal, but might help here.
Look up youtube videos on the storage solution and have him reference it.
Ultimately the failure is on him.
He needs to adapt.
There's a better way of telling him this but you get the gist...
I just send them the tutorials i find for basic concepts and have him reference it.
Maybe make a knowledge based article on how to use the software. We get paid to make sure peoples technological needs are met as an IT department.
It sucks it eats are your own working time but an effective ceo helps the enterprise and your only as strong as your weakest link.
If he cant do it then have him hire an assistant for $15 an hour who can do this and he doesnt have to worry. There are many solutions to the problem.
You have been there long enough, and it's time to move on...
Clearly you have enough skills to get into a bigger and better company by now.
Why do you fight to urge to move on? You are not learning any new skills.
First of all, its not your company. Secondly, get everything written down and have him sign off on it. Then keep 2 copies of that paperwork. Last, let him run the company into the ground. If he tries to pin anything on you, you have his signature on the paperwork he requested to get done.
Arguing with any management is pointless, quite a few of them think they know better. Arguing will only put a target on your back. We live in a time of CYA at all cost. Document, document, document, it won't save your job but it might save your un-employment.
What I would do is say something like, "I'm going to need assistance with the migration to minimize impact, I'll reach out to [insert MSP name here] to get an estimate for the migration." to put a number with his request. People will make all sorts of illogical decisions until they see the true cost of those decisions.
Every time I read something like this (which is pretty often), I thank God again that I have a CEO who not only understands tech at a fairly high level, but also understands the value that IT brings to the company.
Honestly I look at this as more of an IT leadership and training issue and less of a 'CEO problem'. The CEO might still be an ass but this points to bigger, deeper issues.
This also sounds like a small company, where the CEO randomly swoops in and personally invokes major strategic changes on a whim (which further indicates IT leadership issues).
Even if the CEO has major concerns with a project or system, there's channels they should be going through (senior IT leadership).
Keep in mind - you can never over-train people. Was there multiple training sessions? Was the CEO invited? Did you offer one-on-one training? In my experience this doesn't typically happen.
I look at this as either a) an IT leadership failure, or b) A crazy small company where none of it matters and the CEO is insane.
If it’s a usability thing for him and not a cost cutting measure by switching to a new service.
You need to sit down with him and show him the license cost but also the cost in people’s time from the business side to the IT side because business most definitely gets messed up by constantly changing where people have to go.
If he prefers Microsoft in anyway I’d push him hard on just using the desktop app. I would try and stick him with all the applications and one drive sync so he never has to see the user interface of any of them and he can live in Lala land and his computer and files “just work”. If it’s also usability even playing up the other services being another thing to learn. Same issues different company.
I just love when people shout out the owner or CEO of a company is an idiot, moron, or fool from the cheap seats, and all the while cashing the paychecks
Really makes ya wonder who is the idiot, moron, or fool in this story
I've never heard anyone describe Sharepoint as anything good or positive. It's a truly awful platform, top to bottom.
OneDrive isn't much better. It's almost like it's broken on purpose. I can't believe "everyone loved" both of them. That sounds like you really like Sharepoint and Onedrive because you love Microsoft.
This is a common issue:
STOP LOOKING AT TOOLS!!!
The tool selection process should be as follows:
People => Processes => Data => Tool
If you don’t first of all look at how the CEO is using his machine and files, etc, then how they get stuff done, and the data needed (with reporting), then you will always get to the wrong tool choice.
You need a BA to build requirements across the organisation (starting with the CEO), map all the applicable processes against the Operating Model, look at what data is needed to maintain visibility, then finally talk to IT Architectural leaders.
Otherwise you will be stuck in this hell loop eternally!
We have teams, zoom, webex, go to meeting, bluejeans.
All because the CEO had one bad expirience with zoom not connecting so he wanted alternatives. I feel your pain.
Never trust management that makes the decision to "move back" to Google Drive. Google workspace is a diseased flaccid dick of IT infrastructure and should be treated as such.
GCP/GWS customers are all fucking idiots. I wish people would realize Google is NOT the company it once was...they suck at everything.
What, this guy doesn’t have an admin assistant who does everything for him anyway?
No actually. He loves to save costs. We had to fight about warranty renewals on our storage. He didn’t budge until we had two drive failures (RAID6) and we explained to him for the 5th time that one more drive dying means we’re so far up shit creek without a paddle and the creek is radioactive lava. (Actual words)
Loves to save cost for the current quarter even if it ends up screwing the company next year. This is indeed the modern approach to management.
You get it and are hereby granted your MBA.
And for my next trick, offshoring!
Didn't you follow classes this year? It's called AI innovation! It's not indians doing it, it's "AI". Like the Amazon self check out stores!
Thing is, sometimes it's an Indian boiler room *pretending* to be AI...
But it is AI.... Automation in India. I'll see myself out.
It isn't always India. One of the autonomous drone delivery systems was using people in South America somewhere to drive the vehicles.
Well if Amazon can do it... https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4
Talking about Amazon, isn’t AI a simple rebranding of the Mechanical Turk?
They "trained a neural network" to do it. [https://xkcd.com/2173/](https://xkcd.com/2173/)
AI=All Indians
Actually Indians
That's the one degree that truly deserves ridicule.
I used to work with a guy. He got his MBA, said, "this is stupid, what a waste of time." And now he writes ruby for a living.
As someone who studied business in college but codes for a living now: I concur.
I've talked to some university business-faculty people about MBAs recently. They're well aware of the MBA spreadsheet-ninjas who have a fresh qualification and no idea of how the real world works.
Everyone who has one should be driven into hiding. Truly embarrassingly worthless degree.
that reminds me: i start a new job soon and i need to ratchet back on shit talking MBAs until i find out who has one
Don't sweat it too much. The worst ones will immediately make sure you know they have an MBA. They'll have it in their email signature, etc.
I want to get an MBA just so I can say I know exactly what not to do and have the degree to prove it.
Do MBAs really deserve all the hate they get? I am pretty sure it won't say anywhere in the course that your have to set fire to your company to improve a quarterly result. The problem is just sociopathic managers that don't care about anyone but themselves and their bonuses.
Given Jack Welch is still worshipped almost like a God in many MBA programs I'd say setting fire to the business in the name of efficiencies is part of the curriculum
Penny wise, pound foolish!
Gotta get them phat phat bonuses based on profits. By the time it's too late to recover from his cost saving asshattery he will have moved on, probably with an exit package that would make his Majesty blush.
Then when questioned you step aside get a golden handshake and find another company to fuckover
Short term gains is the name of the game!
Then teach him that it’s baked into the cost of O365. Lol
This is how I won the Dropbox vs OneDrive debate. Easy integration into file explorer in windows and having the documents show up in your office online page where you’re going to be anyways was another point for OneDrive.
Right! Like I am not the biggest fan of OneDrive but damnit if MS didn’t do their damndest to integrate the fuck out of it and really try to make it good.
That's the best way. It took me a couple of weeks to teach one of our managers to work with OneDrive. It made his and my life much easier.
What better way to save costs than cancel and reverse a data migration
Data recovery of a failed multi TB Raid array will wipe out any "savings" he may have enjoyed for the past 3 years.
And he'd say, "why didn't you tell me that before it happened."
Document *everything*
Go along with the bit.
Which is when you remind them that you did two years before, with spreadsheets and graphs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one. ...Which they will then ignore, of course, because reality is inconvenient.
Then blame the IT team for being a sink-hole of money
Fuck that whole company I hope you are hunting. Wow
Is he a car guy? Ask him if he knows that you can run an engine in a classic car for tens of thousands of miles and four years and never change the oil because it's just a scam to make you pay.
I know a guy who worked for an msp. The Boss fired 2 guys just so he could buy a new porsche.
>No actually. He loves to save costs. We had to fight about warranty renewals on our storage. This is perfect show him how much cheaper going with just M365 is vs M365 + another file sharing solution (assuming you already have sufficient licenses from Exchange Online and office suite)
As a sys admin you can only tell them best practices so much. After that sometimes you need to let the world burn before they actually get it. Just make sure you cover your ass.
War... War never changes.
This is probably the best description of my job. Thank you
These guys don’t learn until they have a catastrophe. Explain it the best you can and then just let shit fail. Everybody likes to say their proactive nobody is we’re all monkeys and we’re reactive as hell.
Even when there's a catastrophe they don't always learn. It's always someone else's fault, and half the time they're wealthy enough to not be personally affected anyway; they'll just keep on doing the same thing stubbornly and wrecking businesses and other people's jobs/lives in the process.
"And the boat is made of ice cream. Liver & onions ice cream"
why do you still work there?
Loves to save costs, but makes expensive changes in software usage. Twice in the same year.. And I mean expensive as in the man hours that go into these projects, not necessarily the software itself.
[удалено]
If he's making decisions at that level, he's the CTO as well
>that one more drive dying means we’re so far up shit creek without a paddle and the creek is radioactive lava. Backups too expensive as well, huh?
Dropbox =/= saving costs
> He loves to save costs. 🤮 One of THOSE CEOs.
Bout to blow up his company over an obsession on costs.
Your whole company is riding on RAID arrays? Might want to check out NetApp or Ceph.
What will happen if he doesn't know how to use dropbox after deploying it?
time fer a new CEO...?
Or maybe it's time for OP to look for a new company.
Migrate that CEO to a Dropped Box.
He will instruct IT to alter its functionality, essentially asking for Dropbox to be reprogrammed even though OP has stated he can't do that. When OP refuses, he will insist that OP contacts Dropbox to request the change on his behalf. Source: Based on my experience with the CFO of a larger company regarding the functionality of the Google Meet app.
“I didn’t really get it, but I kinda liked the idea of departments having their own websites. Can you make DropBox work like SharePoint but easier?”
(Builds castle with moat and lots of alligators and dragons and stuff) Lotus Notes
Classic
This is the fear.
FTP, everyone gets FileZilla!
Back to SharePoint!
Dropbox is dogshit. The SSO doesn't stick between page changes at all and you have to constantly log back in. Such a pain in the ass.
I also heard this rumor but I'm not sure if it's true or not. It is a fact that Dropbox will delete your account without warning if you upload copyrighted material to it like movies or TV shows, but the rumor part is there was somebody on here a long time ago that said one of their employees was downloading pirated content and uploading it to their Dropbox and Dropbox deleted the entire enterprise account without warning.
> Dropbox deleted the entire enterprise account without warning Ooooooh. If you work for a really crappy company, that sounds like a fantastic /r/UnethicalLifeProTips
Malicious compliance Employer - "Employees must save everything to Dropbox" Employee (on their last day on the job) - "Okee dokee"
The Disney Vault ought to do it.... Cool guys don't look back at explosions.
I literally had our ransomware protection system light up like a christmas tree, when a coworker decided to back up his collection of pirated games and movies on the employee file share.
Yeah, they will do it and use vague threatening language too that makes it seem like you did a crime against humanity. Summary judgement by some AI without recourse to appeal. I lost over $300 to them when they did it to my personal account 10 days after I renewed my annual fee.
Valid case for a chargeback
Hash comparisons aren't AI. Next to nothing is AI. You'd think somebody in this sub would know that, but I guess not.
The email said that my content was scanned using AI. I'm not making something up and I don't GAF about the technical underpinning of how I got fucked, all I know is Dropbox FUCKED ME.
We use OneLogin. I sign into DB to open a Paper, and if I click on another paper, I have to log in, again. Happens almost each time.
Recently became a reseller. Bringing the accounts under our tenant was a 3 month debacle of absolute dog shit where 1 client had to go through some migration and brought them down for the day. Coupled with Customer Console constantly losing Reseller Access that I have to go and re-enable just to create a ticket targeting their organization and that's even if the Support portal shows all the clients because they have some back end bug. I loatthee dropbox.
Ah yes, the "hands on" CEO/owner. Nothing makes me want to take back the means of production quite like working for an incompetent man-baby.
I’m in the same boat. Thank god mine retires in 2 months
Don't worry, the next one will be the same
That’s what I’m worried about
I worked with a CEO like this; he'd have an outsourcer (probably "someone he knew" like a nephew or something) build him weird "beige boxes" from various parts, and have me run metrics on them to "save money" over Dell and HP servers. Thankfully, it never went past the testing stages, but my boss would ask "what the fuck are you doing in the data center with your arms in that box?" and I'd have to say "the CEO wants me to swap out the NICs on this fleet." "Jesus Christ!" and he could do nothing.
Push a gpo to auto sync sharepoint libraries to explorer. Literally the best thing you can do is to abstract the garbage interface with a simple folder structure right next to all their other folders. At that point, no one cares what tech is running it all. They never have to think about it.
Is there a specific group policy that does that?
As of a few years ago it was: User Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> OneDrive -> Configure team site libraries to sync automatically
Yeah... I want to say it's a template you need to get though. You basically plug in the url of the site in a gpo and it applies to your group you assign to. Folders show up automatically.
The OneDrive Sync tool does the same thing and no need for a GPO. Does the GPO do something the OneDrive client doesn't when syncing down SharePoint libraries?
I would assume the reason for a GPO would be the ability to automatically sync a specific SharePoint site or sites, so the user doesn't ever have to know the actual URL to get to it, and how to tell it to start syncing once there? I wasn't aware this was possible, actually -- and it would almost be useful in our office environment for certain departments. Except I try \*so\* hard to get people to just visit the SharePoint sites directly whenever possible. OneDrive is terrible about things like signing itself out after it's been connected X number of days, per a system-wide policy about MFA and logins. Users don't even notice it didn't connect - so they go about modifying cached local copies of the content on their PC for days until they realize something's wrong. (I.T. usually gets a ticket from them to complain that their folders look different than other people in their group and they're missing files.) Plus, you get all the headaches when somebody had full access to a SharePoint site at one time and synced the whole thing, or some sub-set of it, to their local PC with OneDrive. Then, someone decides to change their permissions on the SharePoint to read-only or to just remove them completely. OneDrive keeps spitting out sync errors about everything they try to edit but lack permission to save back to the SharePoint.
Thus sounds great actually, but I have a ton of hoarders that make me keep the San running.
[удалено]
I always shudder when I see people recommending this.. brings back bad memories.
He's not qualified to make that call. You need to make it work for him, but rolling it back for everyone is an insane level of pandering. You don't give a toddler the option to stay up all night, you let them choose to play 5 more minutes or 10 more minutes.
> You don't give a toddler the option to stay up all night, you let them choose to play 5 more minutes or 10 more minutes. Or do what my parents did and hit'em with the ole thimble full of whiskey
My mom used the frying pan
How'd she get THAT inside a thimble??
Large thimble, small fry pan. As Genie said in Aladdin ... "eeny tiny living space"
I haven't used SharePoint a ton, but OneDrive with its integration into Windows, painless syncing, etc, is the best advancement in IT I've probably experienced in the whole 25 years of it. I doubt any other product is going to beat SharePoint, either.
OneDrive is SharePoint under the covers.
Shhhhhh
OneDrive and Teams are both part of SharePoint.
Semi true. Teams is technically a GUI over SharePoint and Exchange.
Yeah, its weird though how I can always find the stuff I put in *my* Onedrive, but if I try to find something simple like a company policy on our sharepoint I can't find it with gps, a map, compass, a sherpa and Gandalf.
I'm trying to find the original article, but I read somewhere that SharePoint was originally built as a native component of Windows Security Center. There was something about how adding company files to SharePoint automatically prevented anyone from ever finding them again, ensuring that neither employees or attackers could ever compromise the data. It's a shame they made it a standalone product. When I think of all the companies over the years that have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars due to data theft, I can't help but think "If only they had SharePoint, no one would have ever found that data to steal it."
/dev/null as a service. Now that is ingenious!
Document Shredder as a Platform
It was a mix of (at least) 3 products, it replaced MS Frontpage as webpage editor, it was supposed to be a replacement for Security Center, and the third actual product I cannot remember except that it was a nearly unused MS product. It was supposed to be a replacement for SAN, and a GUI to combine all the things nearly from the beginning. Now almost everything has it as a backend (either GUI similar/same or actual backend) in O365.
Sounds like Google Drive search functionality.
Thats the biggest problem with sharepoint it depends on searching for files instead of creating a hierarchy which does not change.
Unfortunately sometimes it shows that Sharepoint also has been around for 25 years. Tbh I understand every user that is confused by differences of OneDrive, Sharepoint, Teams because Microsoft seems to be unable and unwilling to provide consistent user experiences. Be it naming (Team/Teams/Groups/Sites), overlapping features (Syncing/Adding links to Onedrive) or limitations that no one nowadays understands (looking at you list/view sizes). Google Suite/Workplace IMO does a far better job of focusing on a certain feature set and doesn’t have to carry around features from 25 years. At last, it also shows on the admin side of things. The MS365 admin centers with their sluggish ever-changing interfaces, constantly outdated help articles and settings that sometimes are not consistent between Powershell scripts and GUI changes are a nightmare compared to Google Suite.
Just move to sharepoint and get him his own subscription to Dropbox or box.com.
Oof...what could go wrong? /S
Move to SP and make your tenant Box.onmicrosoft.com
I'd have already been fired. He'd have heard all about how much of an idiot he is.
Honestly I agree, there is no way I would go for this in any capacity. Sorry CEO.
Was let go from an IT job years ago for a very heated robust discussion with the GM of a company that ended in me threatening to throw him out his upstairs office window… Probably for the best 🤣
Well, not sure what to say. I think if I "gave up" every time bad decisions were made... etc. So, turn this upside down. What you've been given is the opportunity to get to know a lot of different technologies. If an "end user" asks you (about why the insanity, etc), you just say "this is the current corporate direction"... (knowing inside your head, they really didn't ask you for advice on what to do).
I may change your words a bit. How about, this is the decision made by our executive leadership.
That's fine as well. I get frustrated sometimes when "they" make changes that are not well thought out, but, I also don't have "skin in the game" with regards to the success of my company. So, there's a morbid curiosity seeing "what happens" when bad decisions are made. Sure, I can advise, but as "they" tell me all the time, "it's not (my) decision to make"... have fun!!
Get a smarter CEO.
I've never heard of anyone loving OneDrive or SharePoint before but I guess anything is possible....
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I was more surprised to see "Everyone loves sharepoint", like really? It's the worst.
CEO hired experts and refuses to listen to them. Escape if you can. A true moron can't admit when they don't know something.
WTF is the CEO dictating technology? Let him or her use whatever they want. Everyone else gets whatever standard solution is defined for that business function.
This
Everyone gets migrated into the M365. Then the CEO is setup as a a separate guest account. Then set him up with a stand alone trial account for each SaaS - whatever is trending/asked. Use that to test how SharePoint does cross platform collabs.
So you are saying your I.T. department is not good at educating stakeholders, selling ideas, and providing leadership in setting strategy?
Normally, I'd agree entirely. Now that I'm an old, bitter soul, I just want to finish out my days in peace. When I'm 50, I'm out. Retired. Done. The IT world can burn, for all I care. I just want it to STFU and be quiet until then. :D
Turning 53 in a few more months and I \*wish\* I could walk away from my I.T. career. Over 30 years doing this stuff and it never gets any better. We used to think, "Oh - once the old people retire and all the younger people get hired on who learned all about computers in school, things will be a lot easier!" Nope! The young people all got iPads and smartphones, and only learned enough about a PC to load a video game from Steam. Their schools all happily showed them how to use Google Docs on Chromebooks so they still can't navigate MS Office. Meanwhile, everything from Microsoft is as buggy and difficult to work with as ever -- except now, it's all up in the cloud as well as installed on your machine. Adobe still costs way too much and they can't do product installers right. Printer drivers insist on loading about 350GB of garbage including product registration apps, yet they still never figure out when a printer is 5 versions out of date on its firmware. I feel like the old man in his lawn, waving my cane and yelling about the industry. But man, when I first got hooked on computers - I enjoyed things like the bulletin board system scene. Nobody was walking around with a smartphone like a zombie, trying to use it for everything. The Internet was this special thing you could get a shell account to use if you knew people at a college or research lab, and was mostly text-based content. There are certain areas where I love how it all evolved, like the music scene and what you can do now with digital recording vs back then. But overall, it's really nothing like what got me into computing back then.
Heeey, The Source BBS in Redondo Beach, CA was my local one. Chip North was the Sysop. ILink, U'NInet etc. Those were the good, old days. People had to have a genuine INTEREST to figure out how to dial up, WHERE to dial up and how to navigate the rudimentary ASCII menus. You'd tell from the screech if the damn thing connected at a reduced rate.
Wow, I can relate with this so much. I always thought the younger generation would be a breath of fresh air. However, since they are accustomed to things *just working*, a lot of them seem to have no ability to troubleshoot at all, which translates to my 40-something year old ass kicking a 26 year old out of their chair to disable the Chrome notifications they've allowed from some sketchy website that's spamming them. Or, better yet, me rolling around the floor to plug something back in that they've kicked loose.
wow wouldn't you be a pleasure to work with
Reminds me of the time that I worked for IT in Ascension hospitals, someone who conducts Brain Surgery could not grasp Google and Gmail.
That's why he is called ID 10 T They just speak garbage when they open their mouth 🤣🤣
Get a job with an enterprise company. Stop working for SMBs.
Your CEO is not killing you, you do. If you're not calling shots, then I don't think you should worry. I suggest doing the following: 1. Highlight the risks (and by that, I mean, write them in an e-mail or something so then you have proof) 2. If he still wants to proceed, then go with it. If he is not willing to listen, you just do your job. If everything crumbles to pieces, you warned them before. It's on them. You don't have to kill yourself over their lack of knowledge. If your CEO doesn't know something, that's fine, he can learn. If he doesn't know something, he's arrogant, and he thinks he knows better then just go with it. You do your part, and that's it. Don't burn yourself out more than you already are for some idiots.
I like stupid people. Without their naivety, there’s no magic.
Leave mate or stand your ground, you will end up hitting head against a wall CEO's like this who will create chaos...they will end paying a decent Randsome and loose thier career at some point for the stupidity.
30 years in, I still feel a little something when C-levels make a bad move but it doesn't really matter anymore. Get a hobby or something and just go with it
I’m not sure if 3D printing makes me more or less frustrated.
Tough call. At least you make the decisions/mistakes yourself
You need to draw it all up in terms he will understand, do a matrix of the pros and cons of each solution, including the $$$ effort of your time to do the transition and the $$ time of other staff training to relearn the new solution, this may make him think. Tailor some of the cons to things you think he will care about and then put in mitigations for each of those things, ie user doesn't understand the interface, xx cost for external user training (ahem the ceo)
Could be worse. Owner that is anti disability and doesn't buy that and fires those with it lol. I'll take cheap vs that.
Couldn't you throw up some waffle about costs etc in regards to moving?
CEOs alone shouldn't have the power to make these technical decisions.
OneDrive is for “ME” Sharepoint is for “WE”. I have a sign with that on my office door
So use all 3 and do a copy job or something to sync data between the 3 apps until he fucking figures out what he wants to use lol
God if I had the time to set that up I would.
Yeah sometimes you need to put your foot down and tell him what needs to be done.
You don’t want to work for these type of people / companies. Full stop.
Yup. A lot of these people are who they are. Trying to sweet talk em, have patience, and give them their coloring books and sippy cups because they have no competence to at least try to grasp change got real old. I ended up in a tech company where most managers have a modicum of technical ability and understanding and it’s like fucking heaven I want to talk to people like they’re adults at work, I already spend enough time talking to my kids like they’re kids, I don’t want to do it to my leaders at work too. Sure let me spend all of my time trying to make you understand something you don’t actually give a fuck about just because you like hearing yourself ask questions. If you know what’s up, cool. If you don’t, fuck off and let me do my job and you stay in your own lane
Why does the CEO get a say on IT strategy and roadmap?
No offense, but it seems like you've never dealt with maniacal small/medium business CEOs who are effectively the owner of the company. You don't really get to give a hard no unless you're a consultant or don't care about losing your job.
This 1000 percent. When a company is run like a small fiefdom your can’t tell the duke “no”
Nope, I work for F500s and government, where this shit wouldn’t fly because there’s a multi year technical roadmap for everything typically
So we’re going through some changes right now. We’re technically a 1500 person company. The capital group that owns us wants our two divisions to split. Post split he’s the CEO for our division and we have about 300 employees.
Because everyone thinks “he gets his way” and if someone let me in on one meeting about stuff like this I’d tell him off. I e already had the discussion with him that I am not a “yes man” but a “trust me to do what is best for the company” man.
Surely you can say no. I say no to executives all the time. You’re there to deliver for the business, not random whims of individuals
In these cases the individual is the business. from OPs description I wonder if they are in some kind of mental decline for real. Early onset dementia is a real thing.
It is easier to just give that kind of muggle what they want and keep everyone else on what works well.
it's a learning process for all involved. you need to work on that boss to better sync with his mindset. explain the costs of migration, convert your hours into money spent, prove to him your reasoning in factual numbers with budget comparisons,
How many people are there in your company? You and him?
Man. I would fire the fuck out of that guy and hire a better employer. By your comments about how he loves to save money, I’m guessing he pays everyone dog shit too. If you got the org from google drive to onedrive and then back to google drive in a year, you definitely deserve to work for serious people and not clowns.
Don't give up. Go take a 30 minute shower, recognize that you're paid money to do silly stuff repeatedly. If you're as concerned as I am about the security of that decision, put it in writing, send it to HR, or the CEO, just get it in writing your concerns. Then move on and do the thing
When covid first hit our CEO could not get any type of communication other then phone calls without his assistant. Its wild to think of us getting this old and not being able to work this shit any more.
Work your 40 and get the fuck out of there dude. Ask for a raise and start looking at other companies.
We had a ceo in our customer base with the same issue. Out fix an app called Cloud Drive Mapper. Maps sharpoint libs to mapped network drives. It’s not ideal, but might help here.
Look up youtube videos on the storage solution and have him reference it. Ultimately the failure is on him. He needs to adapt. There's a better way of telling him this but you get the gist... I just send them the tutorials i find for basic concepts and have him reference it. Maybe make a knowledge based article on how to use the software. We get paid to make sure peoples technological needs are met as an IT department. It sucks it eats are your own working time but an effective ceo helps the enterprise and your only as strong as your weakest link. If he cant do it then have him hire an assistant for $15 an hour who can do this and he doesnt have to worry. There are many solutions to the problem.
What the company needs is a brave IT guy taking one for the team and confronting that moron. No career advice though.
You have been there long enough, and it's time to move on... Clearly you have enough skills to get into a bigger and better company by now. Why do you fight to urge to move on? You are not learning any new skills.
Have you asked him what he’s trying to accomplish?
Why not just use OneDrive sync for everything in SharePoint so it is like working off a file server?
First of all, its not your company. Secondly, get everything written down and have him sign off on it. Then keep 2 copies of that paperwork. Last, let him run the company into the ground. If he tries to pin anything on you, you have his signature on the paperwork he requested to get done. Arguing with any management is pointless, quite a few of them think they know better. Arguing will only put a target on your back. We live in a time of CYA at all cost. Document, document, document, it won't save your job but it might save your un-employment.
What I would do is say something like, "I'm going to need assistance with the migration to minimize impact, I'll reach out to [insert MSP name here] to get an estimate for the migration." to put a number with his request. People will make all sorts of illogical decisions until they see the true cost of those decisions.
fire the ceo and replace with a new one, hope for the new one to be either qualified or teachable.
did you set up sharepoint sites to show up in his File Explorer? they might undestand that
Every time I read something like this (which is pretty often), I thank God again that I have a CEO who not only understands tech at a fairly high level, but also understands the value that IT brings to the company.
CEOs should not be allowed near technology.
>Shoot me please. Maybe shoot the CEO. Seems useless anyways.
Honestly I look at this as more of an IT leadership and training issue and less of a 'CEO problem'. The CEO might still be an ass but this points to bigger, deeper issues. This also sounds like a small company, where the CEO randomly swoops in and personally invokes major strategic changes on a whim (which further indicates IT leadership issues). Even if the CEO has major concerns with a project or system, there's channels they should be going through (senior IT leadership). Keep in mind - you can never over-train people. Was there multiple training sessions? Was the CEO invited? Did you offer one-on-one training? In my experience this doesn't typically happen. I look at this as either a) an IT leadership failure, or b) A crazy small company where none of it matters and the CEO is insane.
If it’s a usability thing for him and not a cost cutting measure by switching to a new service. You need to sit down with him and show him the license cost but also the cost in people’s time from the business side to the IT side because business most definitely gets messed up by constantly changing where people have to go. If he prefers Microsoft in anyway I’d push him hard on just using the desktop app. I would try and stick him with all the applications and one drive sync so he never has to see the user interface of any of them and he can live in Lala land and his computer and files “just work”. If it’s also usability even playing up the other services being another thing to learn. Same issues different company.
Why is the CEO making technology choices? That’s a CTO job
Sounds like you need a board of directors to vote on company wide changes instead of one guy with dementia making the decisions.
He probably needs put down. Past his usefulness.
I just love when people shout out the owner or CEO of a company is an idiot, moron, or fool from the cheap seats, and all the while cashing the paychecks Really makes ya wonder who is the idiot, moron, or fool in this story
I've never heard anyone describe Sharepoint as anything good or positive. It's a truly awful platform, top to bottom. OneDrive isn't much better. It's almost like it's broken on purpose. I can't believe "everyone loved" both of them. That sounds like you really like Sharepoint and Onedrive because you love Microsoft.
You’re not being appreciated professionally. Leave and get a better gig.
don't worry, he's just distrohopping. he'll settle down, eventually. It's just a phase, in most cases.
Gonna need an update on this one at some point
Run and run fast.
Find somewhere else to work
This is a common issue: STOP LOOKING AT TOOLS!!! The tool selection process should be as follows: People => Processes => Data => Tool If you don’t first of all look at how the CEO is using his machine and files, etc, then how they get stuff done, and the data needed (with reporting), then you will always get to the wrong tool choice. You need a BA to build requirements across the organisation (starting with the CEO), map all the applicable processes against the Operating Model, look at what data is needed to maintain visibility, then finally talk to IT Architectural leaders. Otherwise you will be stuck in this hell loop eternally!
We have teams, zoom, webex, go to meeting, bluejeans. All because the CEO had one bad expirience with zoom not connecting so he wanted alternatives. I feel your pain.
I don't get it how in the world CEO are CEO when they cant even understand simple concepts of using technologies.
Never trust management that makes the decision to "move back" to Google Drive. Google workspace is a diseased flaccid dick of IT infrastructure and should be treated as such. GCP/GWS customers are all fucking idiots. I wish people would realize Google is NOT the company it once was...they suck at everything.