On Employees Educating Employers?

ramannoodle asks: "My employer currently makes many decisions that I feel would save them a lot of money by going about it in a different way. I have presented many of these ideas to them, but being the not-so-great sales person that I am, I feel in some ways that by voicing my opinion on these things, I am jeopardizing my standing with the company. Is it the right thing to do to continue educating my employer on issues they do not want to hear, but will save them money and just risk being one of the many unemployed honest IT professionals out there? Do I hide what I know from them by keeping my mouth shut and just doing what they tell me so I can keep my job and feed my family? It's a tough economy out there, and is it worth being over-enthusiastic about helping the company?" We touched on this issue for contractors, but what about actual employees?

Comments

Re:I tried this. I got fired. Listen up.

[etcshadow]

Yeah, well, it's a double-edged sword. I've refused to hire people in the past because they had simply gone along with stupid-assed ideas at their previous jobs. It seriously fails to impress me in an interview when someone tells me about his/her last project and it was just stupid, stupid, stupid. ...Regardless of the reason. I need people who can take sensible business understanding to technical problems, and I don't think I'm alone.

Don't get me wrong, I know it's a tough world out there and all, but when you are looking to hire the best talent, you have to take the whole person into consideration. The sort of person who is happy to a) do what he/she is told without thinking about it themselves, b) sit idly by while watching their company tank, or c) is unable to recognize the broader scope of technical issues... well, that person is not someone who I want to put that much faith in. I don't want to work with someone who is happy riding a sinking ship down to the waterline.

All that said, if you are looking for a career track that ends at "I can code" (without a healthy amount of "I can think" and "I understand your business"), then good luck. Move to India, if they'll have you, because that's where an increasing of that job market is headed these days. However, if you want to be the sort of programmer who can continue to reliably command a good job in the US or western Europe over the next decade, then look into developing and being able to communicate that business understanding.