[reedf1]

I was getting paid £200k/yr as a Software Engineer for a company with an unresponsive offshore IT help desk. I would often spend a few hours (!!) a day helping various stakeholders with their desktops/printers/email. This was an insanely ineffective but absolutely necessary use of my time (I was managing a small development team with stakeholder satisfaction kpis), sadly my IT efforts were clearly more appreciated than development.

Hard to convince management that a dedicated onsite IT would be required - especially when they think it is your job already.

[flushit]

I suppose there is a difference between companies that are tech to the core (where everybody in the management chain up to CEO is actually a sw eng) or a company where software engineering / programming is just a dept. somewhere on the side.

Gotta appreciate if you're working in the former. Drawback is you can't BS your way through issues. Everybody above me in the chain (which is like 4 people) could write a quicksort blindly. If anybody tries any BS they don't have their job much longer.