Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

duxup

I once worked tech support for a company that made fancy routers.

I got a call from a reasonably high placed sales rep who was upset I hadn't contacted his customer. I had to tell him:

"That ticket is a P3 and I currently have 3 P1s, 5 P2s and I don't know how many other tickets."

He asked I make his ticket a P1 (he had the authority to do so).

Hour later he called back to find out what we had done, the answer was "nothing". Again I had to explain:

"I have 4 P1s, 5 P2s and I don't know how many other tickets."

It's amazing how little people understand / care to understand that other people have work to do too...

View on HN

Living the same thing here and keep getting told it seems like we aren't "finishing" anything and projects seem to just drone on and on. Well when you keep introducing things as "high priority" and "urgent" it means something has to drop off the list (even if it doesn't "officially") however in his brain that can't be true.

> Hour later he called back to find out what we had done, the answer was "nothing". Again I had to explain: "I have 4 P1s, 5 P2s and I don't know how many other tickets."

This reads as a lesson in miscommunication more than mismanagement. On his first call, he should have explicitly asked for an ETA. (Even if the assumption was you would immediately start working on his ticket.) On the first call, after his ticket was escalated, he should have been provided with the new context.

The solution, ironically, might be inserting a manager between you and him who can better handle communication.

Normally I wouldn't have even spoken with the sales guy, but I saw his name on my phone and "Bob" was generally a good sales executive and actually pretty good to support so I answered. Long story short Bob's next call was to my management team (who already knew I was swamped) to get me some resources.

This was very much a situation where things just had to reach a certain point / inconvenience the wrong people before it was resolved.

What my favourite is managers creating whole new lists for themselves so they can say they are at the front of the line. Then are baffled that this is insufficient prioritization that 7+ top lists can't all be top. It really helps highlight who are the do somethings vs the do nothings in an org.

In terms of what's best for the customers and the business, of course I understand your call.

In terms of self-preservation and your quality of life, I'm surprised you got that call and proceeded to take no action on his priority for an hour.

I was actually still on the phone with the first P1 from before "Bob" the sales guy first call. Normally I wouldn't have even answered on my second line but generally Bob was a good guy and I knew he could pull the needed strings to actually get extra resources needed. Eventually Bob got the right people on the line, demanded I work his issue (we had a good working relationship) and some other techs took my other tickets. I preferred that outcome anyway.

Bob was actually a good guy, his questions weren't unwarranted, it's just a really good story to demonstrate how people forget that other people are busy too.

P0's required.

This is how most teams I've worked with "solved" this problem: By creating "P0". Now, everything we are actually working on is P0, and we don't know how to prioritize among them. Soon, someone will propose a P-negative-1...

That's a rookie mistake, they should've gone with the scoring system where higher number indicates higher priority.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com