How to Stop the Dilbertization of IT?

Alien54 writes "In the simplest terms: too many IT workplaces have become Dilbertized -- micromanaged, bureaucratic and stifled creatively. It's become an environment where busy work is praised and morale is low. How is it possible to bring IT's appeal back? 'IT professionals that have worked in the field for a long time often speak about a shift in their work where they have gone from tossing ideas back and forth to make for better technology solutions to fighting fires all day. "There's less emphasis on creativity, and more on maintenance. Tweak this, work on this ... In being reactive not proactive, everything is a crisis. Something has to be done right now, putting out fire after fire, going a long way to making IT a less pleasant environment," said Skaistis. Beyond making for a unpleasant work environment for the techies already in-house, this firefighting serves as a warning to potential recruits: you will not like this job.'"

Comments

IT is in transition

[Flying pig]

I think IT now is in the state manufacturing was in the 70s. To explain: Before the 70s, most volume manufacturing was quite individualistic. For instance, different car manufacturers had very different approaches to manufacturing. But individuality came at a high price in poor designs and poor quality. As manufacturing volumes ramped up (i.e. the economy grew) the cost of the firefighting become greater and greater. The result, of course, was the development of CAM and CAD, proper workforce training, and above all quality management and control. By the 1990s manufacturing was largely sorted in the larger industries. It employed far fewer people, but the results were pretty good, certainly with consumer products and cars. Nowadays, the only part of the process that tends to be manual is final assembly.

I think we are going through the same process in IT. There are a variety of methods of production and management, some of which are highly arcane. The standard of documentation and management in many companies seems to be low, to say the least. IT staff just do not understand kaizen, quality management, or any of the wider corporate things that can actually help them do their jobs better. They confuse better tools with better working practices. Strangely, in the early days of IT things were often better because the tools were limited in performance and scope and the organisation had to be built carefully around them (I was there...)

When we get past this stage, things will change. Quality will be built in to the processes. I suspect there will be far fewer applications in use, and many of the tools available will be greatly simplified. (The same ought to apply to business as a whole; it's hard to understand why the majority of office workers need Powerpoint or the decoration features in Word to do their jobs well.) Fewer people will be employed in IT, and their jobs will be better defined.

The question I don't know the answer to is what they will actually be doing.

Re:Natural Maturation?

[pavera]

Should have used preview...
Sorry slashdot ate my post, here is the whole thing:

I completely disagree with your assessment. I just got out of IT (as in help desk/support/system admin) and into a pure programming job. The reason was I've seen 3 good friends lose alot (wives, friends, any semblance of a life) in the IT industry because IT is anything but a steady state. IT people are still asked to deal with gargantuan complexity and growth. They are expected to roll out insanely complex systems at the drop of the CEO's hat, just because he feels like it. At least in the late 90's people expected this stuff to cost money. Now a days what used to get quoted at $5 million is expected to be handled by a single guy making less than 50k/yr. And when it doesn't happen, they are fired or required to work 24x7 to pull off a miracle. Any slight flaw is seen as a complete failure. Paradoxically, budgets have been cut so severely that there is no such thing as a "test environment" and IT is expected to have some sort of magic ball to predict exactly what is going to break when massive changes are rolled out.

I still have 2 good friends in IT. They both work 60-70+/wk. One travels 75%+. The other is officially on call 24x7. He estimates that he gets a call between 2-6AM at least 4 times a week. He is one of 2 people managing more than 600 users, Windows 2003 AD, Cisco Call Manager, Cisco IPCC, more than 40 PRI circuits, and 3 DS3 WAN circuits. These 2 guys manage the routers, switches, firewall, everything. When presented with the impossibility of these 2 people actually handling the workload managements response was "Sorry, if you don't like it, we already talked with xyz outsourcing corp, you're lucky to have this job". Mind you, this company is a very large call center. Their entire operation depends on IT. If the network is down they lose more than 100k/day. If users can't log in, it costs more than 1k/hr/person. And management isn't willing to address issues. It is also bizarre that they are pulling the "we'll outsource you" card, since they just brought IT back in house after a disasterous "outsourcing" expedition over the last 2 years.

I quit this world one month ago (after 7+ years at least partially performing general IT stuff). Now I purely develop software. I'm happier now than I've been in 8 years. I only work 40hrs/wk, my cell phone never rings after hours, and I don't have pissed off disdainful users cursing me at every turn because they forgot their password or had number lock turned on and couldn't log in for 10 minutes.

But IT *is* dead!

[driftwolf]

I spent 22 years in IT. My goal was, like many system admins, to be invisible. A properly managed system that does not attract attention but "just works as it should" is, by an IT definition, an excellent system. Was I or any other system admin rewarded for this? Hell no! Was the guy whose server room crashed regularly punished? Hell no, he got promoted, for being good at handling emergencies. Emergencies created by his own lack of foresight. That's why IT is dead.

Unfortunately, management today, in every company I've worked with, has different ideas. In management, accounting, what-have-you, if you get noticed, THEN you're good. You have to do something to be noticed. Something big. Something flashy. That's not how IT works. The only time something big and flashy happens in IT is when the UPS explodes and the server room catches fire. That is not a good result.

This is, however, the type of shit that IT outsourcing companies have to do in order to be sure management thinks they are worth the money they are getting paid. I've been asked to fake emergencies (usually just before a budget review) so that our response to that emergency can get us a pat on the back. I learned dozens of ways to make a server look like lightning had hit it without pointing to deliberate sabotage. I basically stopped caring about doing "good" IT, and only started to care about revenue. That's when my career took off and I finally understood the nature of business, where honesty and ethics are a liability and get you fired. Twice, in my case. I'm a slow learner. Now I'm trying to find my moral compass again. But at least I can afford to do so.

When I worked directly for that company that outsourced its IT, I went for at most 3 years without a single server crash. Suddenly, they put servers in MY server room that were almost guaranteed to crash weekly.

Management loved it!

Soon as they saw systems go down, they'd see how fast we got them back up again (easy, when you'd planned or predicted most of the outages in the first place) and just throw more money at the outsourcing company. The order of the day was no longer prevention, but quick fixes to problems. It made us look "better" in the minds of management, and management bought it. Hook, line and sinker. In several companies.

Management that didn't have a clue that each crash actually cost them much more money in lost time and lost sales. Not a fucking clue! When the techs tried to tell them, using management language and sound financial analysis, they still only listened to their counterparts at the various vendor companies. Namely the lying scum salespeople. Not their own techies. I understood why later: because management are by training and experience incapable of understanding honesty and good intentions. When I worked as pre-sales (as in, after I sold my soul and my career took off), I saw exactly how the sales people would lie, cheat and steal to get that contract, then hand off their promises to the poor sap who had to implement it. When said poor sap had to go back and say that what the sales rep had promised either didn't exist or could not be done (I know it couldn't be done and I'd told the sales rep, but he changed the message when talking to the client and I kept quiet), it wasn't the sales rep who got blamed, it was the post-sales installation guy!! Meanwhile, the sales rep still got his nice fat commission, I got my cut, and the poor bastard who had to try to install that box of twigs we sold never got a promotion.

THAT is why IT is dead, folks. You can't manipulate or lie to a machine. It either gets the correct input or it dies. Most technically oriented people I've met are also honest. Often brutally honest. But honesty is a liability in today's business world. So the mindset that makes a good tech is the total opposite of the mindset that allows someone to get ahead in todays "business economy". That's good capitalism folks. No ethics. Honesty sucks. Whoever has the biggest bankroll wins.

So IT, good IT, is by definitio