Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.