Imagine working in a tech support role, but your boss knows nothing about technical issues. You might wonder how the boss got that job, but it’s irrelevant. You have to deal with it. How would you deal with it?

In this story, one system engineer is in that exact situation. The boss really does seem pretty clueless, and it’s about to backfire in a big way.

Let’s read all about it.

No Need To Ask The Guy Who Manages The Server

Background:

I’m a System Engineer for a company that makes software for a different organization. My main job is patching and maintaining virtual machines that are located on servers in another part of the country.

The people in that other part of the country manage the servers and have control over the resources my VMs use.

One of the VMs uses an automated build and release suite. Another VM is set up for code analysis as part of that build process.

Here are the key players in the story.

Cast:

Me = Me

Dev = one of the developers who relies on the two aforementioned VMs

Boss = Our supervisor who has no technical background. Rumor has it he used to be a manager at a bank.

SE = Senior system engineer. Also kind of my supervisor. Doesn’t get along with Boss.

Server Dudes = The people in a different part of the country who manage the physical servers

There was a problem.

Story:

Dev walks into my office. “Hey Me, just thought you should know that all my builds are failing and the error code says something about $codeAnalysisProgram.”

Me, “Okay, let me just go to the web client for it and see what’s up.”

ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT

Thinking to myself, “What the hell? Maybe the server got rebooted and the service didn’t start back up.”

OP gets to work.

To Dev, “Well since the code analysis not working is holding you back, I’ll remove it from the build process until I fix it so you can keep doing your code wizardry.”

So I do that as a quick fix while I troubleshoot.

Boss gets upset when anything gets in the way of “Continuous Development/Continuous Integration” and wouldn’t stand for new builds being held up by code analysis.

Now I try to remote into the VM to start the service back up.

Time to try something else.

Remote Desktop cannot connect to this computer for one of these reasons… blah, blah, probably turned off, blah

Alright, no big deal, I’ll just check out the VM management web client.

I go to the website.

I login.

I allow flash.

Now, OP has a question.

The server isn’t listed.

Wat?

I walk over to SE’s office. “Hey SE, Server Dudes wouldn’t just delete a VM without talking to us, right?”

SE, “I don’t know, probably. Why? Did they?”

OP found out what happened.

Me, “Well it looks like the code analysis VM just disappeared. So I’d say yeah.”

SE, “You should probably go talk to Boss. I know he was talking to Server Dudes earlier about something.”

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So I wander on down the hallway to Boss’s office. “Hey Boss, would you happen to know anything about Server Dudes deleting a VM recently?”

Boss, “Yeah, I told them to delete one that didn’t do anything. Why?”

The boss really messed up.

Me, “About that. That VM was running our code analysis on it.”

Boss, “What do you mean? In this spreadsheet that only I use and/or know about, it says that VM doesn’t do anything.”

Me, “Well maybe next time you should ask the person who manages the VM instead of asking your spreadsheet.”

The boss clearly didn’t check with the right person before making that decision.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

Not everyone can get away with talking to their boss like that.

This person has some advice.

Another person asks a good question.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a helicopter inspector who grounds a flight after the pilot is rude to him.

Here’s another question.

It’s crazy that the boss would jump to conclusions without actually talking to the person who would know what’s going on first. Assuming you know what you’re doing when you really don’t can create a lot of problems.

At least the boss admitted responsibility.

That sounds like a frustrating place to work.