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PHBs Getting "Secret" IT Training
An anonymous reader writes "As if all of us aren't already already aware of this, PHBs don't know jack squat about computer technology, and they won't seek any training from their own IT staff because that would be an admission of "weakness" so instead they are getting outsiders to train them in secret." Lucrative work for the secret tutors I s'pose. I guess getting tutored in secret is better than just floundering in ignorance.
I know of a systems admin doing the same! - posted anonymously to protect the guilty.
Floundering in ignorance isn't something that happens at /. every day.
I have seen the people that they hire when not in secret. Seriously, I had a guy in two weeks back to train me on my new I-series server. I helped him set it up then showed him how to connect to the internet, then I skipped the training in disgust.
No. Floundering in ignorance is much less destructive than "a little knowledge". A completely ignorant PHB says "make me a system that counts sheep". A PHB with a little knowledge says "make me a system that counts sheep, and it should use an ACID-compliant database and J2EE, and I think XP will be the way to go..."
Dilbert: "You have to hold the notebook upside down and shake it to reboot, remember?"
PHB: "Oh right, thanks"
I feel safer now.
"YOU'D BE SURPRISED by what they don't know" says the trainer.
No one who has ever worked help desk would be.
Based primarily on the experience of one tutor, they imply that there is this vast underground of executives secretly trying to figure out their e-mail. Facts, people, I want facts! Show me more than one over-priced tutor, or even 10. Anonymous surveys, large industries, etc. That would be real news. Not some journalist interviewing someone they met at a party and calling it news. ++
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
I guess getting tutored in secret is better than just floundering in ignorance.
I take it you haven't had the "pleasure" of your PHB embarrassing you by yelling "I know it's your T1 because our network guy teleported into the Baywatch hub and checked it!" at a Qwest network admin during a heated conference call.
For the PHB's here: It's 'telnet' and 'Bay Networks'.
Perhaps another reason "PHBs" might be heading to other sources than the IT staff is because the IT staff treats them with such contempt?
God yes - you hit the nail on the head. When reading some of the posts on Slashdot, I wonder how some of these people can hold a job given their holier-than-thou genius-of-all-tech attitudes.
Get over yourselves. An informed boss can make better decisions and work easier. And, if you can help them in a way that doesn't involve humiliating them, maybe it will come back and reward you.
Am I the only one who sees Simon's fine hand in this matter?
BOFH fodder, indeed....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Consider GE, which instituted an internet mentoring program (Word doc) for its top executives, including former CEO Jack Welch.
You don't need a computer expert to teach computer basics, and the upside is that the lower level employees get executive mentorship, and the executive employees learn these tools while keeping connected to employees down the ladder. This, to me, is a much more sensible approach than seclusion, shame, and secrecy.Now watch me hit this drive.
I find it funny that a group that collectively has trouble with personal hygiene, getting a date, ever getting a second date, finding something to talk about besides computers, etc is down on high level executives.
So they don't know computer applications. They know finance, marketing, operations, negotiating, and a host of other things that mostly don't have anything to do with computers, but do have a lot to do with ongoing success.
One of the happiest, best paying environments I ever worked in had me reporting to a division controller responsible for operations accounting related to stores doing $200M in sales annually. She was almost helpless on all sorts of things computer related, but she could sign purchase orders faster than I could type and when HQ IS weenies got under foot her head would spin around, she'd spit nails, etc, etc, and they'd go back to guarding their silly little mainframe, while our mighty intranet continued to win the hearts & minds of the people in the field.
Instead of poking fun at them, maybe you should study them - they *are* the ones with the money/power/cars with power windows that work - you might just learn something.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
...and is more common than you think in management.
My boss told me that when he took his first CIO job (moving from an operations management job) that not only did his boss encourage and pay for an IT "coach" to give him a crash course in IT, he said it was pretty common for execs to use "coaches" for all kinds of things, including a fair amount of touchy-feely management subjects.
Of course they could give two buttons and just default to having them do the same thing via software
<PHB> Which one do I press?
<SecretTutor> It doesn't matter.
<PHB> What do you mean it doesn't matter?! There are two buttons! Why are there two buttons if it doesn't matter?!
* PHB throws mouse out the window
*** SecretTutor was kicked by PHB (fired)
That would have worked a few years ago, when computers were still a bold new frontier. Think about the Old West--at first rugged individualist cowboys and adventurers are rewarded, because the place was so empty that ability to deal with nature was more important than ability to deal with your neighbor. In fact, people probably went out west because they couldn't stand their neighbors back east.
Think about how much of America was built by people who couldn't stand their old neighbors. Even the native americans must have really hated China at some point.
Then, as things began to get crowded, the same sort of business men and politicians from back east began to rise above everyone else, and the cowboy lifestyle began to decline.
It's the same with computers--first it was dominated by nerds like you (and possibly me...) who were really good with machines. But as there got to be more and more of us, and as the machines got more and more reliable, then yet another frontier starts to close, and making people happy once again becomes more important than making machines go.
Now, the mature thing for folk like us to do is to either find a new frontier, or accept the world as it is, and try to improve our social skills as best we can.
Yet before I do that, I'd like to take a moment to shed a tear for the death of yet another frontier, yet another chance to make the American dream a reality. The American Dream, by the way, is that one can improve one's own lot in life simply by doing a better job, through physical or intellectual effort, rather than by kissing the asses of whatever feudal lord happens to be dominating our lives at the moment. That individual worth could somehow beat out nepotism and favortism. A sweet, yet elusive dream
And before I allow Stockholm syndrome to completely overwhelm me, I lament how much of humanities effort is wasted in the collective solipsism advocated by so many people who reply to you--the opinion that physical reality outside humanity is of less importance than social reality within humanity. A society which believes that itself is the most important thing in the universe will experieince very limited growth.