Managing Geeks

zxmaus · December 5, 2009, 12:19pm

Hi,

I recently found this article in computerworld and I think it is very true - at least in my company ... what do you guys think - is the author right? Is it ignorant management that makes us IT people seem to be anti-social and weird?

Please share your thoughts

Kind regards
zxmaus

rhfrommn · December 7, 2009, 3:40pm

Very good article. Not every point he makes is true of every IT job I've had, but all of them fit at least some of the jobs.

edfair · December 7, 2009, 4:52pm

Agree with it completely. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, from the bottom to 3 levels up from the bottom, with 3 different companies that imploded from a lack of management skills or self-delusion.

Management creates their own problems by promoting or hiring managers that don't respect the abilities of the people that work for them or in the case of misfits, the inability to judge the work problems created by the problem employees.

Corona688 · December 16, 2009, 11:45am

I can't say I agree with that wholeheartedly, but I do agree with this:

Most IT pros support an organization that is not involved with IT. The primary task of any IT group is to teach people how to work. That's may sound authoritarian, but it's not. IT's job at the most fundamental level is to build, maintain and improve frameworks within which to accomplish tasks. You may not view a Web server as a framework to accomplish tasks, but it does automate the processes of advertising, sales, informing and entertaining, all of which would otherwise be done in other ways. IT groups literally teach and reteach the world how to work. That's the job.

When you understand the mission of IT, it isn't hard to see why co-workers and supervisors are judged severely according to their abilities to contribute to that process. If someone has to constantly be taught Computers 101 every time a new problem presents itself, he can't contribute in the most fundamental way. It is one thing to deal with that from a co-worker, but quite another if the people who represent IT to the organization at large aren't cognizant of how the technology works, can't communicate it in the manner the IT group needs it communicated, can't maintain consistency, take credit for the work of the group members, etc. This creates a huge morale problem for the group. Executives expect expert advice from the top IT person, but they have no way of knowing when they aren't getting it. Therein lies the problem.

As a minor example I'm often instructed to put folks into the senior staff group so they can access files senior staff has stored for them. But it is not necessary to give junior interns read-write access to the most deeply secured files on our intranet. If senior staff would just store less-restricted files in less-restricted folders(again, laid out to their specifications, and heavily documented down to immutable "read me" files in all base folders) this would be unnecessary. I'm continually put on the spot and must seem like a stuffy, paranoid jackbooted enforcer, but when I explain the extent of the damage that could be done by accident with needlessly broad access, my manger's always forced to agree.

It's of course not always like this. I'm happy to say they're gradually getting the idea. Still I clearly understand the sentiment... For IT's systems to operate correctly, and no matter how closely we try and model them to the users' needs, the acknowledgment and cooperation of both users and management is needed whether any of us like it or not.

Jackson123 · December 16, 2009, 1:23pm

I couldn't agree with the article more, thanks for sharing!

radoulov · December 18, 2009, 7:16am

Very nice article,
thank you!