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Who are CIOs Planning to Hire Next?
Ed Baker writes "Do you have the skills CIOs are looking for? Cioinsight.com just posted their latest research, in which they asked more than 400 top IT executives about the hiring outlook for 18 different IT positions, and finds that the demand for new systems and infrastructure is leading to more hiring for IT professionals who can build them. The result: Project managers and programmers/systems developers top the list of IT professionals CIOs are looking to hire."
I've harped on this for almost two decades. Technical skills keep you employed. Business skills get you promoted.
[OK, nit pickers, I'm waiting for you to point out the corner cases where this isn't true]
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
"Technical skills keep you employed. Business skills get you promoted."
I say:
Technical skills get you the job, social skills keep you employed. Business skills get you promoted."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Translation: Big dumb companies value propaganda more than function and don't value their employees. Notice that training is close to the bottom of the list. Technical competence and familiarity with fundamentals of the field should be the thing they look for in new hires. Business school is something a company should pay for it's own employees if it wants to promote them to upper management. For a new employee it's a place where they can forget what they need to know. Looking for detailed business knowledge outside of the company is an admission that you are not willing to train and have not trained your own people adequately in a long time. Prediction: Big dumb companies are going to get dumber and people working there will continue to be forced to waste their overworked lives on mind numbing nonsense instead of getting things done right. You will be worn out and discarded like a rubber gasket.
True familiarity with the way a company works can only come from working in the company and keeping up with your competitor's actions. Business school case studies, while interesting, generally don't apply outside the specific case except for obvious general principles. Sure, some business schools are very good at understanding industry but I'm not convinced that's going to be useful to some guy who's there to make a better network or information sharing tool for the company. Someone who's been at the company long enough is going to know who needs what information from who an how best to get it there. If they have had the time to keep up with the field, they are a company's best resource.
Yes, I've worked for a fortune 100 company. It got nothing but worse and this survey shows that the trend continues. Notice how the smaller companies valued skill more than propaganda?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
you are not balancing a character sheet here.
You can maitain your '8' in tech AND raise you business skills.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
CIOs (in Fortune 500 companies, at least) are so far removed from the proles at the bottom of the corporate pyramid -- the admins/engineers, developers, etc. -- that they frankly don't have a damn clue as to what they need. It is not their job to know *specifically* what they need that far down the corporate ladder; that is the job of one or more layers of middle-management they have separating the CIO from the people with actual technical skills (unlike the CIO), i.e. the rest of us unwashed masses (and in IT, this is sometimes a literal phrase...).
The CIO's job is to manage management en-masse (to "throw IQ points" at problems, as Bill Gates' approach tends to be), and to have "Big Ideas", or at least read the same business-tech magazines their lowly technical people do (eWeek, InformationWeek, etc.) which present big ideas -- and then tell the techies what to do, even if it's technically the wrong thing to do. Your typical CIO does not have a technical background...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
No one said you had to unlearn anything. But if your job doesn't involve working in X technology every day, you're simply not going to know it very well, regardless of how many books you read or courses you take. I've taken countless "training" courses throughout my job at my current megacorporation. They're really not all that helpful, not compared to actually having to work with it. Most people tend to forget things they don't use.
Depends on the goal. If your company's goal is to create a solid, stable, efficient, maintainable, scalable infrastructure then you can forget about the business skills and focus on the job. If their goal is just to make money at all cost, then forget about the tech skills (you already got the job) and focus on the business skills, such as how to smile and lie to someone's face and turn around to stab them in the back in your next meeting with their superior, and how to cover your ass proactively to avoid taking the fall for disasters that will result from the obvious lack of competence, since nobody cared about competence, its not the goal, etc, etc, etc.. :)
Quit being jealous and realize that upper management is just like any other group in society: some are geniuses, some are fucktards, and the majority lie somewhere along the grey scale in the middle.
Upper management isn't supposed to be a microcosm of society: they're supposed to be the creme de la creme. If they were all geniuses, I don't think many people would be too jealous, because they would obviously be earning their money. But if some are fucktards, as you put it, and most of them are just mediocre, then what the hell are they doing in upper management making tons of money (and also having a large impact on the careers of all the employees under them)?
I'd be happy(er) if I lived in a society where only the smartest and best people got to positions at the top, whether it be in business or government. Things would work out a lot better that way, and I wouldn't have so much of a problem with them making millions of dollars per year. But don't tell me to not be jealous or angry when morons and incompetents are promoted to very high positions while much better people get passed over.
I was going to reply to that message with something very similar, but you beat me to the punch.
The only thing I would add to that is that it isn't really that someone's not as smart or someone isn't "better" than someone else, it's that the people who work hard get passed over while the people who take credit for other people's hard work get promoted. It encourages people to not work hard, because 1) nobody cares if you work hard, you certainly aren't going to be recognized or rewarded for it, 2) all hard work gets you is more hard work, and 3) someone else is just going to take the credit for your hard work anyway. It's the "Office Space" cliche: you only work hard enough not to get fired, because there's no reward in going above and beyond that.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Social skills and [false] confidence get you the job, not completely sucking* keeps you employed, and kissing above and kicking below (aka business skills) gets you promoted. Techical skills get stuff done.
* Nobody wants to fess up to hiring sub-par people, so they pretend they're okay and keep them around.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
1. Nod your head continuously any time your boss is addressing your team. This conveys that you agree with everything he says and that you only wish you could have articulated it as brilliantly as he is doing. If his ego is insatiable, his eyes will constantly gravitate in your direction for affirmation. In other words, embrace your inner bobblehead.
2. Disagree with everything the boss says. Go out of your way to contradict her every statement. This shows that you're an independent thinker and way smarter than the rest of the peons you've been thrown in with.
3. Use the same buzzwords as the boss. Make sure what you say is an actionable, user-centric, directionally correct turnkey solution with touchpoints. As you can see, it doesn't even have to make sense if you say it fast enough. For extra points, speak entirely in acronyms.
4. Ask questions during company meetings that have no purpose other than to showcase your tremendous intellect. If the CIO is talking about reorganizing the help desk, don't be afraid to raise your hand and ask what effect the current business strategy will have on the next quarter's profit margin. For an added bonus, ask this question at the end of a meeting. (See next point.)
5. Don't make any major presentations during the course of a regular meeting. Wait until the meeting organizer is wrapping up and makes the perfunctory "does anyone have anything else?" request. Then you launch into your spiel, assuring that everyone has to pay attention to what you say. Sure, they may hate you for making the meeting run long, but you'll have made an impression.
6. Laugh hard at your boss's jokes. The higher placed the boss, the greater your laughter should be. If it's the CIO, feign uncontrollable mirth by intermittently wiping tears from your eyes.
7. Be at work 23 hours per day. Be there when your boss gets in and when she leaves. Even if your workload only constitutes about 3 1/2 hours, stretch it out with coffee breaks, four-hour lunches, non-work-related web browsing, and general co-worker chit chat. After all, productivity is measured by your physical presence not actual turnaround.
8. Pay close attention to whatever phone/PDA/gadget the boss uses. Do a great deal of research on it, then casually let the boss know that you're looking for a new phone/PDA/gadget with particular features--namely the exact ones that his model is known for. The boss will instantly recommend his own gadget, so that when you buy it yourself, he thinks you took his advice, rather than merely copied his purchase.
Shamelessly ripped from "The Trivia Geek" at TechRepublic
Small companies sound good on paper. They suck in practice. They have no cash at all, so they can't pay you, can't buy you the softs you need and they put the servers in the basement and cross their fingers. You can't get promoted, so you have to leave to advance. I would give up the "fun" atmosphere and "non-corporate" environment for a more paid vacation and quarterly salary reviews.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
The simple reason is: why rock the boat.
For example: let's say you are hired to work for slave wages at the helpdesk. After two months, you have proven your worth by doing a great job.
Hey, they have a great helpdesk tech who works for slave wages. Why should they ever promote the tech? If they promote the tech, then they'll have to get a new tech, and train him/her. Of course the tech will just quite, but companies are seldomly that far sighted. After the tech quits, the company will bitch about how techs are job hoppers.
Companies don't want to train because they are afraid of training people for the next job. Besides, it doesn't fit into the budget.
Heaven help us from more Project Managers.
I have yet to meet one that I consider competent. Though I have heard fairy tales of such mythical beasties actually existing.
The push towards ever more (incompetent) PM's stems from a lack of leadership in the executive suite and the common misconception (or desire) that people are fungible resources, that can be plugged and played at will. Exec Management in many companies (especially the large ones) have no concept of leadership, and thus they promote a mechanistic approach to management, which manifests in their hiring ever more PMs and delegating responsibility down to them.
Ever seen a project manager that could be labelled a "project leader"? I haven't. Yet. And I'm not holding my breath.
PM's, at least the accredited ones, worship the PMBOK (Which would be better acronymized as the PMFOC, IMO). Seen any mention of a PMBOL (Book of Leadership)? That'll be the day.
Unfortunately, I see no end to this approach. It's only going to get worse, till everything crumbles. Offshoring is just another symptom of higher management's abdication of leadership and the treatment of people as commodity components.
My 2 cents worth.
Chaeron Corporation