So....
We're moving the filestore today. That means it will be off line. I've decided to keep this information secret by emailing my users, their managers and contractors for the past two weeks. I've also hidden it on a scroll on the main page in 36 point font. Herewith is the message I sent:
Bold in original.
We took it offline at 1:50 today. At 1:53 I get an IM from a user:
User: I can't get into the system. There's an error message that says it's offline and I should log out. Should I log out?
Duffy: Yes (thinking: Of course not, why would you say that?)
User: When will it be back up? (just an estimate)
Duffy: 36 hours
User: Really!?
Duffy: Yes. (thinking: no, its up and running. I'll give you the sooper secret URL but don't tell anyone)
User: OK. Thanks. She wants to talk to you.
Duffy: She?
User: My manger
You can see where this is going. Lather, rinse, repeat. I end up forwarding a weeks worth of warnings to said manager. Manager was on the original emails as well. I have no idea why this surprises me but it does.
Hi All,
This is to inform you that the file store (K-drive) will be unavailable Friday, April 11 2008 beginning at 2 PM. The outage is scheduled to last (36 hours) through Saturday, April 12.
During this outage, users will be able to refresh reports stored locally. However, [redacted] web reports (both [redacted] and [redacted]) will be unavailable.
The outage is scheduled to allow us to migrate to a better performing server with more storage than the current K-drive.
Should you have any questions related to this outage, please contact me at the numbers below or [redacted] (by Sametime). Thank you for your patience and understanding while we upgrade our hardware.
Bold in original.
We took it offline at 1:50 today. At 1:53 I get an IM from a user:
User: I can't get into the system. There's an error message that says it's offline and I should log out. Should I log out?
Duffy: Yes (thinking: Of course not, why would you say that?)
User: When will it be back up? (just an estimate)
Duffy: 36 hours
User: Really!?
Duffy: Yes. (thinking: no, its up and running. I'll give you the sooper secret URL but don't tell anyone)
User: OK. Thanks. She wants to talk to you.
Duffy: She?
User: My manger
You can see where this is going. Lather, rinse, repeat. I end up forwarding a weeks worth of warnings to said manager. Manager was on the original emails as well. I have no idea why this surprises me but it does.
Comments
Typically, I try to give at least a half hour lag between when I say I'm going to take something down and when I actually do. I've told people something would be down starting at noon, when I ate a leisurely lunch starting after noon and only when finished did I take the system down. When you give them plenty of extra time they have absolutely no cause for complaint.
Manager gets in her face about it. I simply can NOT have...she said indignantly...ALL of my staff missing FOUR HOURS out of their schedules today.
She was kind of grumbling at me about it, saying, I thought you had to be smart to be a manager?
It's interesting watching engineers and managers interact. You can't solve problems that others can't solve, at the same time as you're making an effort to think the same way everybody else does. There's a tacit acknowledgment that the managers are there to do the second of those two...to facilitate effective communication when things are worded nebulously. Funny thing is, though, when the engineers can't solve something, THEY start feeling insecure, like their whole reason for being has been invalidated. But managers who can't communicate effectively, are kind of like...la dee da...must be the other guy's problem.