Slashdot Mirror
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?"
It's just about impossible to find a job working for someone whom you respect. You would not believe some of the stupid things my boss has done!
Have the entire IT staff sit down with the owner of the company and explain why the owner should fire the moron IT manager.
Is it ignorant to believe an IT manager should be a knowledgeable in technology as a whole?
Yes. Not to be stereotypical, but he is a manager. In a perfect world, he would have tech skills, but he doesn't. So he manages.
As for how to deal with it? I doubt you really have a choice. Not to be cynical, but what are you really going to do about it? Hopefully he isn't a "know it all" type and will actually listen to what you have to say before making a decision. If so, just do your best to educate him in any given situation so he can make the right decision.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Is it ignorant to believe an IT manager should be a knowledgeable in technology as a whole?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Hell yes.
Quit. Seriously.
I don't know your situation at all, but if the manager has any influence on the rest of management, and they even think that he has a modicum of knowledge, your work life will be hell. He (hopefully) realizes that he's not as skilled as his workers, and will try to steal their (your) thunder every chance he gets.
I worked for a manager that knew very little about tech, and any time I had a suggestion for an improvement, it somehow ended up becoming his suggestion by the time it made its way up the food chain. I was lucky enough to land a great job elsewhere and I got the hell out before it got too bad.
My new boss knew less than me technically, but he knew and freely admitted that he knew less, as his job was to be a manager, not a technician. All my successes were mine, and all he took credit for was doing a wonderful job in hiring the right people - which is how it should be, IMHO.
Not saying it's always 100% factual, but more often than not, the perception is that people who are technically apt are not able to deal with people.
Someone who shows "too much" technical knowledge might not ever make it to a managerial position. More often than not if someone knows "too much" about what actually goes into something, they can't dissociate their own opinions about the methods used in order to see the picture and get the job done, IMO.
I have a manager thats HIGHLY technical, but his management skills suck. He's a YES man to every other department because he doesn't have any balls. He won't back us up and if you go into a meeting with him, you know you're in trouble. He doesn't do evaluations and unless you're asking him a technical question, won't make a decisive answer.
... you don't necessarily need to be highly technical to be a good manager, but if you're a shitty manager you're stuck. Technical skills can be learned, but good people skills are hard to come by.
... I guess it's a toss up. My bosses boss is a great manager, but HIGHLY untechnical. Has a hard time shutting down her computer. It's annoying, sure, having to explain things twice, but at least we can trust her to manage stuff and cover our backs and get stuff done.
I think I'd rather have your boss
I dunno
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
You should be thankful.
This guy may not be as technically skilled as you guys are, but it doesn't sound at all like he is meddling either. You may not be gifted with a wonderful experience, but if the guy isn't actually damaging things, I'd leave well enough alone. You may not be as lucky with the next guy.
Think about it, a bunch of management types, who will invariably hire another management type. Do you really want that to be a management type who is also convinced that his role indicates a level of proficiency that he doesn't have?
I feel like that is what you will get next if you push that issue.
Perhaps if you spend more time whining on /. everything will work out for the better.
This is Slashdot. We're ALL smarter than our bosses. You don't catch us whining about it. Much.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
His response? No freakin' way. Quite simply, this guy was a little bit introverted, didn't like speaking in front of people, didn't really have the social skills to distinguish himself in business meetings. Plus, what he really wanted to do was code, and if he was doing all the stuff I had to do, he'd never have a chance to do it.
DING! Well there you go, I thought. From then on I saw my primary responsiblities as being three: 1.) Advise the coders on what decisions made the most sense based on the overall agenda of the project and its team members and come to an understanding of how we planned to move forward; 2.) Go to meetings and speak to that position, gather requirements from the other team members and communicate them back to my staff; and 3.) Keep the guys out of those same meetings as much as humanly possible.
"All right," I said. "Can do."
Breakfast served all day!
Not quote firing hem, but how about going to his boss and point out that you're more qualified for his job than he is and want to be transfered above him. Mention it in a constructive way and say that you're doing it for the benefit of the company. If the difference between your skils and his is large enough to be noticed it'll probably happen. If not then it's not clear that it should have happened.
My rather verbose boss, head of IT, wanted us to come up with a contingency plan for ethernet. At first we looked at each other trying to figure out what he meant. Evidently, he wanted an alternative to ethernet that still provided networking just in case ethernet failed. We're not talking about a device failing or the network being down, we're talking about failure of the protocol itself. And he wanted us to find a way around that... Did I mention we were just a regular office of about 30 people with a sum total of 3 IT workers?
I dealt with this a few years back. Thankfully the company's VP used to be a tech guy and realized how little our manager knew... he was let go due to "budgetary" reasons.
The thing is, managers act as a buffer between tech staff and the rest of the company. In some companies this isn't true, but at ours it was. If one of the other managers had an issue, they weren't supposed to talk to us about it. They were supposed to talk to our manager. That allowed him to do what he was supposed to do (manage) and gave us more time to do our work.
I would assume that your boss knows that he isn't nearly as gifted as the rest of your team, which is why he doesn't meddle like some managers do. Be thankful for that, and try giving him a point here or there on easier stuff so he can try doing those things better. Since he doesn't sound like a bad guy, just deal with it. The benefits of you not having to do management tasks (budgets, taking heat when something goes wrong, dealing with higher management, managing losers like his workers) are a fair tradeoff.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
I've had managers in IT that were generally non-technical, but damn good managers. I've also heard of a great many technical managers who tend to spend more time playing with new ideas and toys, or thinking they can do their employees' job than actually managing.
Semi-unrelated, but I've also noticed that my best managers were women, can anyone else comment on that?
Christ.
You've never worked at a real job, have you?
Is it ignorant to believe an IT manager should be a knowledgeable in technology as a whole?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Hell yes.
Seriously: You misunderstand his job.
His job is NOT to drive the tech. (If he's knowlegable it's a bonus, but it's not required.)
His job is:
- to keep upper management (and himself!) off your back
- to get you the resources you need to do YOUR job
- to set policy for the department
- to evaluate your performance and assist you in improving it
- to settle disputes and allocate resources and tasks among the department's members
Many of these are helped somewhat by technical knowlege. Some are actually hindered.
In particular, if he knows too much or rose from the ranks, he is likely to try to do some of the work himself (and neglect his other, more important functions) or worse yet try to micro-manage YOUR work, making decisions for you and otherwise getting in the way.
In a VERY small company or a startup he might also "wear the hat" of an individual contributor and spend part (ONLY part) of his time as a member of the team. But this is dangerous for a number of reasons (starting with you judging his managerial competence by his individual-contributor competence). And in even a moderately-sized department it's impossible: If he's doing it, he should be out hiring another hand (or fighting for a req to enable that).
Don't think of him as a more-expert team member: That's the Tech Lead's job. Don't even think of him as Captain Kirk to your team's Spock, Sulu, Scotty, Uhura, Checkov, and Bones (though that's much closer.)
Think of him as your stereotypical congressman - out doing political battle and deal-wheeling to bring home some pork and change the laws in your town's favor.
Meanwhile: His job is not to BE a star: His job is to make it possible for MORE THAN ONE of you to be stars. Your job is to make him, you, and your co-workers look good to those above him, by keeping his promises to them and feeding him good information.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I've thought for some time that the best managers are those who see their jobs backwards from the way most managers see their jobs: they act like they work for the people they manage. They help the employees work well together. They organize and make sure their different employees understand what is going on with the other employees. They evaluate the various obstacles that their employees are facing, and they try to remove those obstacles. They deal with executives and customers so you don't have to.
IMO good manager knows it's not his job to do the job. It's his job to make it easy for his subordinates to do their jobs.
I'm an IT manager and head of RnD. Yes, it can be too much to ask
Get over it. You don't want an IT manager who knows more about technology than you do. You want an IT manager who trusts you to be more knowledgeable, and knows how to manage. Knows how to keep upper management out of your goddamn face so you can get your work done, knows how to motivate you, and is smart enough to make the understand that if he's busy managing he can't keep up with technology.
I basically had to give up being tops in my field anymore, because I can't recreationally pursue pure technology any more. Just the facts of the job, and I'm a better manager for it.
However, having an IT manager who can't use his computer is a problem. The question I have is it because he is incapable, or because he is stretched to thin to deal with it any more? My boss has trouble with FrontPage for god's sake, which (having never used the program in my life) I fixed in less than a minute.
Of course, this was the same guy who built all of the core technology our company is built on from scratch 7 years ago. He's just too busy managing money, manageing resources, and generally being a CEO to focus all his brain power on the problem in front of him
This is so wrong I just have to chime in.
First, a technical manager without technical experience is worthless.
Second, managers with no industry knowledge other than first year MBA knowledge, (your quote), are worthless.
Third, anyone who does NOT understand that handling both people AND systems requires insight into both is not woth your time.
...unless you are part of the family. A comment from the voice of bitter experience.
Then you'll like this one too. After many requests for our manager to upgrade our desktop machines from limping 500 Mhz processors (this was 3 years ago, when Ghz was old news), I finally decided to send out an email detailing the loss of productivity in compile time on those machines versus my Athlon 1300+ at home. The numbers came out to over a 5x compile time increase, enough to staff an extra developer for an entire month. I had all the screenshots and graphs and charts to back it up. The response? "You make a good argument here, but you forget that we bill by the hour."
Some managers will never get it. There are a dangerous breed out there (like the one mentioned above) that relentlessly pursue power, no matter how (un)qualified they are. Also, the sad but true Peter Principal further facilitates this incompetency. The only effective counter that I've found is to go the grassroots route. If you garner enough support, you may end up with your marketing folks hanging printouts on every office door entitled "Ask not what your developer can do for you, ask what you can do for your developer". It didn't take long after that.
If you had a problem with me you guys could have just come to me and said something.
Oh and hey my DHCP is DNSing again.
This
Our office's IT person yanked QuickTime off my desktop computer because according to her, it was a security problem because "QuickTime goes across the net to check the time...you know...that's why they call it Quick Time."
She also denied me the right to install Mozilla FireFox because according to her, "Mozilla has more security holes in it than IE." If anyone wonders why IE ranks so highly in visits to Slashdot, its probably because so many employers have wankers for IT staff that won't allow any other type of browser installed on the office machines.
The same IT person tried to claim that our office had to buy a new license for a copy of Microsoft Visio that was installed on a machine that nobody used anymore instead of uninstalling it from that particular machine and reinstall the program on the computer of the employee who requested the program. Management wouldn't listen to my protests on this until I produced an email from Microsoft directly indicating the extra license purchase was unnecessary.
Yet another case of bonehead government IT staff justifying their knowledge and position with an MCSE certification.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I have read Slashdot for a while and never felt the need to comment being that my real insight into technology is nonexistant. Yes, I am a boss just like the one you're talking about.
First thing to realize is that unless your boss is a technical lead who's a developer/tech, he is hired to things which are different from what you're hired to do.
I have no clue how to fix a computer, I don't even know what version of Windows I am writing this on. But I do know how to keep a few hundred developer from programming our company out of business. We have guys whose job it is to keep my PC running. I can't do what they do, and they sure as hell can't do what I do!
Second thing: How does your manager measure success? Since I know I can't develop the whole product myself, the only way I know to succeed is to make sure my developers succeed. That's the only thing I can shoot towards which will produce net gain for the company. If your manager measures himself the same way, you're golden. If he realizes he's not a tech and lets techs do their job, what more can you ask for? Would you preffer a tech manager who was convinced (rightly or wrongly) that he could do the job better than his underlings?
Third: I heard people complain about their bosses this way (I am often the target) Usually its sourgrapes whose root cause has zero to do with management's technical ability. Sometimes the manager's personality clashes with the employees, or the employee is jelous of the status and money. If these are the true causes of your discontent, look within yourself for a resolution.
Fourth: all other things being equal, a good manager who also posesses an understanding of what his people do is more valuable than a manager lacking that understanding. In other words, if you can learn all the non-technical stuff your boss does and he doesn't learn the tech stuff you do, you will soon become more valuable to the firm than he is. If this is your ambition, go for it.
Finally, you'll be better off if you learn what it is that your managers are held accountable for by THEIR bosses. You bet your ass your boss isn't measured by how well he can fix the computer, but only by how many computers you as a department fix in the year (or some metric along the same lines).
Mock Tech Interviews & Free Resume Review
As part as my undergratuate engineering coursework, we had to take a Professional Ethics class. During that time, I spent 4 weeks going over the Challenger disaster with a fine-tooth comb. It absolutely disgusted me.
By and large, the engineers did their jobs to the best of their ability. They were aware of the O-ring problems, having been warned by the manufacturer and they knew the O-rings had never been tested or launched at the low temperatures that day. They repeatedly voiced their concerns to management. They even refused to sign off on the launch.
The management, on the other hand, didn't take any of it as a serious problem. Of the group directly involved with the launch, only one had a technical background, and he caved almost immediately from the pressure of the majority. The managers were under political pressure to make the launch a go, and that was their only concern.
An engineer by the name of Boisjoly blew the whistle* on what happened knowing full well that by doing so, he would probably ruin his career. No one hires whistleblowers. Otherwise, we might have heard a very different story.
What was the point I was going to make... Ah. Management never seems to have much use for professional ethics, too little understanding of what they are managing, and always seem to think their MBAs are advanced degrees that somehow trump a "lowly" B.S. in Engineering.
I think one of my old professors summed it up best.
Engineers:
The A students go into teaching/academia
The B students get most of the jobs.
The C students go into / switch to management.
*he was later awarded the Prize for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility by the AAAS for doing everything in his power at the time to halt the launch and exemplifying professional behavior
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
If you take your laptop out of range while you have the Token, you get to keep it. If you collect 10 of them, you can mail them in for a prize.
sudo eat my shorts
Cisco was running 10Mb Ethernet over barbed wire years ago.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
For starters, let me tell you about my life. I hate my job. I really do. But I live in a town where there is nowhere else to work.
I have come to learn something in my life...
Ignore your job. Remember, it is just a means to an end. My manager makes stupid decisions. My co-workers are all stupid and spend hours each day congratulating themselves on a job "well done".
The secret is to care just enough to keep your job and do it well. Forget about all of the other crap.
You work to feed your family and your children. Your company will never thank you for all of the hard work you put in. They will never recognize you for your talents.
Just do your job... and go home to what realy counts....
Your family.
And Half-Life 2...
YEAH, BABY, YEAH!!!!!!!
Technical knowlege != good technical manager.
Between traditional employment and contracting and consulting I've seen alot of managers in action that run the whole gamut of technical knowhow and I've noticed almost no correlation between technical skills and good management. We all bitch about the clueless boss, but sometimes the clueless boss *knows* he is clueless and sticks to the things that he can do and lets his engineers make the decisions he can't which actually gives us *more* control over our lives since it frees us to implement processes and technologies that actually work instead of those that some hottie saleschick convinced the boss he had to have.
Most of the things a manager needs to do are not technical or are things he should not be doing without input from his top engineers. He needs to:
If you have a non-technical manager who can get your team the resources it needs, keep others off your backs, lets you self-prioritize and self-schedule as much as possible and gets you raises and cool toys, then KEEP HIM. Just convince him that he needs to defer technology decisions to the senior engineers. He probably isn't really that comfortable making those decisions anyway and I have found mba-types to often be quite easy to guide to the realizition that making a tech decision is not a managerial task.
On the other hand, I have had some highly technical managers who couldn't keep their little fingers out of every little situation--often with dated knowledge since they can't stay fresh like a practicing engineer. I once had a manager who had been out of the trenches for a decade but who insisted on logging in and "looking around" during really hot problems. Inevitably he'd walk in every 30 minutes and ask about something we had already seen and discounted or taken care of. Once as a joke we modified his shell so that it just said "Everything is working fine, sir." no matter what he typed.. lol :)
The problem with lots of MBA-mill managers is that they apply the crap they learned in school to managing developers and engineers and don't understand that what we do IS NOT MANUFACTURING! Most high-tech work is highly creative and hours worked does not always correlate to productivity. Problem solving, coding, etc all require focus and inspiration and do not respond well to traditional management techniques. So that is the main upside to a technical manager is that he at least has been there and has some idea what it is like. Unfortunately many technical managers can be so lacking in management skills that are clumsy for a long time before they learn how to manage engineers. This can be compounded since so many of us have had bad managers--it's like child-abuse, even if they know the a-hole boss method doesn't work on engineers it's the only thing they've experienced and so they revert to it out of desperation because subconsciously that's how they think a boss is supposed to act.
The ideal manager is one who understands *engineers* since that is what he is managing. If he understands the technology that is a big bonus if he is able to do all the other stuff. But I'd trade a technical boss who can't protect his people or wage corporate war effectively for a "clueless" MBA who can wrap the C-level executives around his little finger any day of the week.
I'll probably get lost amongst the chatter here, but I have to weigh in as I've been both a manager and a technical guy for most of my career. I've had more time as a techie simply because I prefer that line to the management track.
Basically, a good manager does not have to be good at the job of his employees. In fact, more often than not it's preferable that he's not. The reason for this is that managers (good managers at any rate) need to deal with stuff that technical guys find wearing or even bullshit. Stuff like project planning, resource allocation, and generally playing the "politics game". If you're a technical guy in a management position, there's an almost natural tendency to presume that you're better than your employees. That leads to a presumption that you know the answer when they do not, and thus that you can do their job better than they can. It then irrevocably leads to a manager who micro-manages his employees. This makes him a lousy manager.
I personally went into the management job and knew this was a risk. As a result I made a conscious effort to seperate myself from the technology even to the point that I requested my rights to the system be taken away (I was granted admin privileges when I started). This forced me to go to my employees and look to them for solutions. As such, when we had a problem I usually sat down with them, explained the problem and asked them to give me a BRIEF overview of their proposed solution. I always told them to avoid technical details as I didn't need them. Then I usually asked for a timeline for a fix and walked away. I could then go back to the manager / business owner / department head who reported the problem and give them my take on the problem and give them a timeline (usually plus a few hours or days depending upon the extent of the problem). I never told them who was working the problem or how it was going to get fixed. That's how a manager works. This way I showed trust in my employees abilities, kept the heat off their back and set the expectations of the reporter that the problem was being diligently worked on and thus would be fixed.
I'd say 80% of my job was "public-relations" based. To me, my technical knowledge was somewhat of a liability. I ended up looking at solutions to problems and sometimes over-analyzing the solution my employees had come up with. I had my own ideas about solutions more often than not but had to keep them to myself. I couldn't test or implement because I had no access, and if I were to try then I would be showing my employees that I didn't trust their judgement. This undermines the entire department and thus turns you again into a bad manager.
Eventually I quit. Not because I wasn't wanted in the position (I had great working relationships with my employees that I enjoyed and still stay in touch with some of them), but because I had found my "geek-karma" to be a liability to my direction as a manager. I wasn't comfortable being the "general", I found I much preferred being "in the trenches". Besides, honestly I find that I can be much more flexible with my schedule as a techie than I ever could as a manager. Even though I have the occasional evening and weekend work I need to do, I prefer it over the constant 11 and 12 hour days I needed to get all my stuff done as a manager, the interminable meetings and the absolute hard-and-fast requirement that I be in the office between the hours of 8am and 5pm every day... even if I'd been there until 2am dealing with paperwork.
And as for those who comment that a manager will take your "thunder" as a "hot-shot", think about this. When you f**k up, a good manager will also take the hit. I can't count the number of times I had a screw up in my ranks that I had to go to my management and say, "A member of my group dropped the ball. They're diligently working on a solution and I will take full responsibility for it." I got on the wrong side of a few upper managers because I refused to state who on my group screwed up. I always told them I would deal with it in