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First Thing IT Managers Do In the Morning?
An anonymous reader writes "When I was a wee-little IT Manager, I interviewed for a position at an online CRM provider in San Francisco, a job I certainly was qualified for, at least on paper. One of the interviewer's questions was 'What is the first thing you do when you get to work in the morning?' I thought saying 'Read Slashdot' wouldn't be what he was looking for — so I made up something, I'm sure, equally lame. I didn't get the job. But the question has stuck with me over the years. What do real IT and MIS managers do when they walk in to the office in the morning? What Web sites or tools do they look at or use the first thing? Remember, this is for posterity, so please be honest."
If it's early in the iteration (we have two week cycles for our agile development plan) then I'll log on to XPlanner which is a Free Open Source project management tool that allows me to control the user stories and tasks for our project. Early on I look for people that have more hours than others and I try to mitigate that by visiting them and just talking over what they have to do on a high level with them. Since I'm still young and know all the technologies we use, I give them drawings and any sort of information they need to get the job done.
If it's near the end of an iteration or someone is empty, I shuffle tasks and then make a note to talk to both the people one on one when they get in. I also take the time in the morning to talk to people about what they need to work on so they don't spend all day on the wrong task. In the event of something pending that isn't going to get done, I schedule a meeting with my manager and maybe the customer. Haven't had to do that yet though.
Now, keep in mind this is only for a 10 person development team so it might not work on your level. But the first thing I do is assess the day by going over what people checked in and completed the day before in my project management tool, XPlanner. If you haven't used it, I heavily suggest and endorse it--you just need a server to host it on and you're ready. Oh and I'm 25 with little or no management experience prior to this so that could also make this advice completely worthless and naive.
In my opinion, the best thing a team lead can do is listen and, well before it happens, stop people from putting themselves in bad positions where they're in until 3 AM one night before a customer meeting. You take precautions at the beginning of every day and your team should be alright.
My work here is dung.
We still tell our employees to shut down. But we also have the machines set to automatically start up at 7:30 AM (an option in most newer BIOSes). Updates are applied at 7:40 AM, rebooting in time for any 8:00 AM early birds (office opens at 8:30).
Why shut down vs. other power saving options? I don't like dealing with the power save options in XP. Most of them suck and aren't worth the trouble. And people still shut down even if we ask them not to.
When we finally upgrade to a suitable operating system that can handle true hibernation, I'll change the policy.
None taken.
Different people like different things. That goes for the employees and the employers. It's why Google does things one way, Fog Creek does things another and why some of us will quit jobs in disgust and never understand why our friends, who we thought were smart, will happily remain there for years.
I'm lucky, I've got a situation where my management have given me a free rein to do what I think is best, a team that appears to appreciate the environment I create and that's been able to pay off in terms of a sustained, significant increase in profitability (any idiot can increase profitability in the short term at long term expense), a huge increase in reputation for my team members within the company, with clients and even on standards bodies, etc. and, off the back of that demonstrable increase in profitability, the ability for me to argue for, and get, a large number of significant pay raises for every single long term team member in an industry where large raises tend to only be achievable by job hopping.
Sure, my style's not for everyone. One contractor we used sent me racist hate mail after we let him go for yelling at the receptionist, bitching that a server admin took too long to set up an account and then leaving after three hours because parking cost $8 for the day. In his case, my beliefs that we're the sum of our reputation, including how we treat others as well as how we perform technically, were so objectionable he needed to resort to vitriol. That's cool, I hope he'll be happy somewhere where you're allowed to attack people for improper care and handling of the self important. The great thing about the world is he gets to find a manager that suits him, reaping the rewards of that, while my team members get to find a manager that suits them, reaping their own rewards.
I'm not in any way denegrating nerds. I'm one first, learning the other aspects on top of that. Technical knowledge remains essential for a technical role and I was careful to state that I don't have respect for the technically illiterate, morally vacuous schmoozers out there. Where I've personally found works well for me, and works well for most employers, is the realization that a combination of strong technical skills with an understanding there's a human level too (where interaction with integrity rather than fake schmoozing is the emphasis) seems to generally make for a good manager.
I'm not perfect. I make all kinds of mistakes. But that's at least the philosophy I've formed, what I've observed many more senior managers seem to look to hire and, aiming for, has at least brought me a fair degree of success measured both in terms of how my team performs over the long term and how well I feel I've been able to do, looking out for the guys who do work for me.
Of course, those're just my observations and the direction I try to head in. That doesn't appeal to you? That's cool, it's a huge industry. Interviews should be as much about you interviewing your potential new management as about them interviewing you. You get to find somewhere that works for you, I get to build somewhere that appears to work pretty well for me, and we all come out of it pretty well.
I work for a small manufacturing company. I am 50% of the IT department. My job title in the HR database says "IT Manager". In practice, that means I'm CTO, system administrator, network administrator, server operator, software architect, DBA, phone guy, cable guy, automated test equipment tech, webmaster, desktop support, and that's just the short list. I also keep tabs on our application software specialist, but ultimately, I manage technology more than I manage people. If it uses electricity and isn't greasy or wet, it's my problem. (If it's greasy or wet, it's Maintenance's problem.) I like it this way; it keeps me from getting bored. To each their own, but don't assume yours is the only way. :)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
First thing I do is put my glasses on. Check the BlackBerry. Flush. Shower/shave/breakfast. Check real e-mail. Drive 40 minutes.
It is now about 0705. I'm still 25 minutes from my first stop. I'm a field technician by title, but I'm the 'IT Manager' for 12-25 clients. And every single one is the most important client I have. Just ask my boss.
It's either the backup that didn't run again, the Exchange server that once again needs to be rebooted form an overnight &*#$up, the routers need to be reloaded since the power went out cause the UPS can't hold them overnight after the cleaners vacuum the cord out of the wall, or a new Dell workstation doesn't boot two days after being received and Dell won't get there before I can. And I charge them a maintenance agreement, cause they like Dell hardware but can't run a business on the service. And I told them about the capacitor problems a few years ago and they trust me but still buy Dell. Sheesh.
If only I were the IT manager for one single company with just as much stuff on fire, but a lot less driving, usually.
Ha! I ditched it for cubicle life! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I'm just a tooth on the gears now, not the SAE90 that gets dumped out and changed on some insane schedule...
If you're a good IT manager, you get coffee, check status, make the first call(s) of the morning, and settle in. If you're not a good IT manager, you check status, pee on whatever fires are burning the hottest, get coffee, and pray a little.
You do whatever needs to be done first. Right after coffee.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
No lecturer actually collected their assignments at the 5pm cut off. Very few would even see it as a priority before noon the next day. They simply relied upon the department receptionist to tell them who handed it in on time and who gets the instant 20% knocked off for being late.
Befriend the receptionist and you got an extra night on every assignment. For the really big stuff, if she liked you enough, you'd tell her your woes and find she'd offer to tell the lecturer, "I'm SO sorry, Nick handed this to me before the deadline last week but I guess I put it down on the wrong pile." You then got to listen to the lecturer talk about what he had been looking for, after he assumed no one else could submit work, and leave everyone else wondering how you so effortlessly got straight As.
Sure, technically, each lecturer held more power. But every one of them always had students sucking up to them, trying to gradegrub, and was pretty much immune. And you had ten or twenty different lecturers you had to try it with.
Alternatively, one receptionist extended every deadline for you and knew the lecturers well enough to tell you great tidbits like, "Lecturer X admits in the staff breakroom that he likes a glass or two of whisky while he grades. He starts off grading pretty strict but jokes about how his criteria's much more 'relaxed' by the end of the night. I'll slip your assignment in where it'll get the most generous grader. Lecturer Y hates grading and gets more angry as the night goes on, so I'll put your assignment at the top of her stack."
Amazing how much power the people who allegedly don't have any power really wield.
Mind you, social engineering is also the reason why some hackers will spend days trying to crack security vulnerabilities in software while another guy will achieve just as much in a single phonecall.
1. I arrive at my desk ...One of them gives me an update.
2. I open the lid on my coffee
3. I start to drink my coffee
4. I glare at my minions until...
5.
Delegation. Get others to put out your fires for you. THEN claim the credit.
-Jar.
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