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Uneducated IT Managers, and How to Deal?
R.Mason asks: "I work in an IT department for a small to medium sized family owned business. The job is great, except for our boss. He simply doesn't know nearly as much as he should. Our team finds ourselves teaching him or explaining remedial things far too often. Even when his own computer is acting up, he doesn't know what to do with it and has us fix it while he sits and watches. He spends hours and hours on the most insignificant tasks as if he has nothing better to do. Is it ignorant to believe an IT manager should be a knowledgeable in technology as a whole? A person you respect and frequently learn from? It creates an extremely frustrating work environment, and our team doesn't know how to approach the problem. It's becoming too much to simply "put up with it." What advice do those of you in the IT field have for this issue?"
You said family owned... is he/she in the family?
If not you can always go to his/her boss as a group and air your complaints.
If thats just not politically feasible look for another job or put up with it.
Lastly if you're feeling ballsy tell him/her how you feel. If you do it en masse maybe he/she will resign or take steps to improve the situation.
But, when you go do this if you do, make sure to be nice and positive about it all. Not "Bob is an idiot" but "I'm concerned that Bob may not have the needed skills for this job." That will go a long way.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The problem doesn't seem to be his technical skills, but his management/time management skills. If you are fixing something, and he sits around watching, then that is a waste of his time. The fact that he doesn't know how to do something isn't the problem, the problem is that he doesn't recognize it, and instead of letting those who know just do it, he tries to, or has someone do it and watches them (a waste of his time).
A good manager should be able to let those with the best skills for the job get those jobs done.
If his technical ability is so low, that he can't understand the projects, and thus can't manage those, then there is a real issue.
Once you get a "manager" title, your technical skill immediately start degrading to some level, but theoretically your management skills should improve.
Ok, I give up, why you?
IT stands for I'll Try. IT is the final job of desperation for "professionals" who aren't good enough to get a real job in the industry. DeVry grads come to mind. Its always filled with barely adequate technologists who may be able to do something with Visual Basic and that's pushing it. Most of the time they fuck up people's systems more than they keep them running. Get used to it if you're resigned yourself to a life of IT.
Unfortunately, most of the Dilbert comic stripts are quite realistic... :(
good thing too, because if she wasn't, i would have had nothing to distract me from the fact that the video was not funny and i just wasted two minutes of my life. Thanks a lot GP.
Indeed. I have a girl like that. She just recently became interested in computers, but damn, she's hot when she's working... not sure if it's the hard drives, the cables, or what. But damn, you're right.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
i.e. one of the layers is the eletrical signal in the wires, with things such as voiltage levels, cable impedance etc, how 1 and 0 will be represented etc.
The other layer is the logical interpretation, meaning the packet/frame structure of the digital that signal encoded onto the wires, i.e. the 1's and 0's
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com