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9 Reasons Why Developers Think the CIO Is Clueless
Esther Schindler writes "Finally, a Forrester analyst who understands the attitudes of software developers. Mike Gualtieri identifies nine behaviors managers need to steer clear of or risk being labeled 'clueless' — from control freak tendencies to being a vendor puppet. My favorite, however, is point #8: 'the CIO collaborates to death,' in which Gualtieri opines, 'And, if you never watched Star Trek then you shouldn't even be a CIO.'"
What's a CIO? The article doesn't even say.
If you are called a 'CIO' then you are pretty much guaranteed to be an idiot. WTF is an 'Information Officer' anyway, and how can you be the chief one if there are no others? What is wrong with being head of the IT department? It doesn't sound as swanky, which is surely a good thing, reminding you that IT is there to serve the rest of the business.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Oh yes, because all us engineers are all the same with our funny little ways and you really must get to know us as we all are.
The only thing Gualtieri needs is to never manage software developers, unless he wants a homogenised band of slaves who are easy to tame by sounding "with the gang" but who won't provide an ounce of innovation because they're all already reading from the same hymn sheet.
Who's bright idea was it to put those stupid fade-on full screen adds over webpages.
Thanks for a link to an ad. I'll skip this story and find one posted on a site that doesn't hate users.
This post approved by Shampoo.
s/think.KNOW/gi;
There, fixed it for you.
If we only THOUGHT the CIO was clueless, that would be a different story. too many businesses are like septic tanks - the really big chunks (the floaters) rise to the top.
So remember, children, high visibility isn't necessarily a good thing. It might mean you're just full of shit.
Coder: "How tall are you?"
CIO: "6.1"
Coder: "Gee, they're piling shit higher nowadays."
First he says don't be a dinosaur, then he starts talking about tapping Ethernet cables.
The last time I tapped an Ethernet cable, my buddy was throwing 9-track tapes at the dinosaurs to keep them away!
Anonymous Cowards get no respect.
if you never watched Star Trek then you shouldn't even be a CIO.
If you make decisions based on the television programmes you watch, you are a fucking moron.
Also, point 4 in the article is going to be interpreted by any CIOs who do care as "be sure to stay current with all the hot buzzwords". Developers will see through most attempts at this instantly.
The former CIO of one of America's 'Big Three' car companies, who shall remain nameless, but I'll say that the name of the company is a four-letter word ;) -- was an IBM vendor puppet. Of course, he came from IBM, and after he left, he went back to work for IBM....hmmm.....
Needless to say, his policies live on. The only approved vendor at the four-letter American automobile manufacturer is ... IBM.
My blog
The problem is, in many companies, the role of the CIO is pretty nebulous.
It gets further confusing when you have both a CIO and a CTO. When you don't, the CIO has to fill both roles, which are often at odds.
The way I see it...
The CTO is responsible for understanding, predicting, and planning technology.
The CIO is responsible for ensuring that the technology in use by and acquired for the company is in the best interests of the company (and its shareholders, if applicable).
CIOs are typically from a financial background, as at the end of the day their primary responsibility is to the business units that fund the technology. It isn't about the latest, flashiest, or even best gadgets - it's about meeting the needs of the business units while spending the least amount of money to do so. Unfortunately, this often leaves us (the geeks) on the short end of the stick. And perhaps worse, with the financial focus of the average CIO, they often fail to understand where a reasonable investment in technology can save them money over time. Since the typical CIO is only in their position for a few years, they don't have a lot of time for investments to pay off. Cut costs today, and let the next guy fix the mess they've made.
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
to visit a webiste like CIO and not realise its just a sophisticated domain squatters site
90% adverts 10% content
CIO: "Very funny. Now security will be escorting you out. No, we won't give you a reference."
they think watching Star Trek is a prerequisite to being a CIO
"Earl Grey, Hot!"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
with the ad on top of it? What a ridiculous idiot decided it was a good idea to hide the content. Why bother going to the trouble of creating content if you refuse to show it?
I've reported directly to a couple of CIO's in a couple of different organizations. In both instances they were petty, clueless people. On the other hand, I've had customers whose CIO's were not so bad and seemed to have a good grasp. I don't think there is a one size fits all answer to this one, but it's true that quite a few of the CIO's I've interacted with have been what I would kindly call clueless idiots.
Then again, they were smart enough to somehow get that high paying gig, so go figure. Many times though it's not what you know, it's who you know.
... that met 6 of the 9 items. Two years after I left he's gone, their biggest client is gone, half of the dept left or were fired, now they have no significant IT resources available to sell their clients with the rest of their business.
... "finds far too many ways to use the word 'Synergy'" - is that on the list, or anything involving corporatespeak?
10: No sense of humour.
Can we just go ahead and ban this site from posts? Their gradient hurts my eyes and their articles are stupid sudo knowledge. Don't be too much of a geek, but watch Star Trek, give me a fing break.. And while we are at it, can we ban sites that pop an ad straight in your face on connect?!?!
*followed by company collapsing as Coder was only person maintaining ancient mission-critical app...*
Number One, go take a number two!
I was just offered a CIO position this am, we're negotiating the start date. Too funny.
And, if you never watched Star Trek then you shouldn't even be a CIO.
Whew, got that one covered. Scotty! I..need...that...data center power. And I'll preface all my emails with a Stardate.
Stop thinking about your golf game.
D'oh! How did he know that?
Guess I'll find out if this is better than running my own consulting gig. All those times I shook my head wondering how people so clueless got into decision making positions, karma comes around. All those times I suggested a better way to have it ignored. Not anymore. It's an interesting feeling.
Vendors are a problem. Relentlessly annoying. Going to have to come up with a system to keep them from bothering me all day.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Maybe I'm just old hat, but I thought the role of a CTO was to deal with the.. uh.. technology. As in, for companies that actually develop technology. And the CIO does the IT.
As I recall, "CIO" was popularized by the dot-com companies, and immediately thereafter, since they needed as many C**s on staff as possible to get their VC funding, decided that a CTO was needed too, even though their business was selling pimento loaves on the e-web. So then it became just a great big alphabet soup with everyone squabbling over what their all important title should be. (Yes, I have worked in such an environment more than once).
I think the most obvious mark of a doomed startup is when people get completely hung up on establishing the org chart before the company has even made a dime in revenue. I realize it's basic human (/animal) nature to have to get the pecking order establish first and foremost. However when the title itself is the result of such as clueless and counterproductive process - and indeed, a throwback to such a clueless era as the dot com days, it's hard to see how you could expect your underlings could bestow any credibility on it.
I realize I may have offend any CIOs in the audience, but that's not the intent. My point is not personal - what I'm saying is just that if you're good at your job and still getting no respect, perhaps a less "tainted" title is in order.
s/think.KNOW/gi;
Substitution replacement not terminated at line 1.
Not much of a fix.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Which it turned out didn't matter, as the entire population was wiped out by a virus contracted from a dirty telephone.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
1) He/she gets paid more (stupid)
2) He/she gets paid more (a**)
3) He/she gets paid more (repetition)
4) He/she gets paid more (filter)
5) He/she gets paid more (you)
6) He/she gets paid more (guys)
7) He/she gets paid more (are so)
8) He/she gets paid more (clever)
And
9) He/she gets paid more
And that, for me, sums up the entire discussion.
Slashbots hate the CIO because they all think that they are the greatest 1337est coder to have ever walked the earth. The CIO wouldn't even try to freestyle sed, because they've been around the block a few times and know it's dangerous.
There, fixed it for you.
too many businesses are like septic tanks - the really big chunks (the floaters) rise to the top.
I think Officers need to eat more fiber.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Sounds like the CIO wasn't doing his job and implementing documentation policies to make sure there were no esoteric mission-critical functions that could only be handled by one individual on the planet.
The reason why CIO's are normally clueless is that you have to be competent to recognize incompetence. The folks who normally select the CIO are business people who have no understanding of technology whatsoever. The are in fact "technically" incompetent. They choose the person who scares them least. They want the person with whom that can communicate without being bogged down with any complexities or difficult concepts. They will stay far away from the most knowledgeable and experienced people in favor of someone who laughs and jokes with them about the big game, a television show, or anything else they can understand. They will reject someone with the capability to understand a system from the ground up as not seeing the "big picture". This is why CEO's are often unsure that they are getting the bang for the buck that an IT department should bring to the table. It's because they pick the least qualified person to lead based on their personality rather than ability. On the positive side the CIO who wants to keep his job will find a few key people who really know what their doing and throw money at them to ensure that they don't leave. They are the folks who really run the department by proxy.
I swear I didn't know it was loaded...
I'm pretty sure that an employee who used such a puerile insult either really doesn't want to work for the company any more (and wants to get fired instead of quitting for unemployment benefit reasons), or knows of a good reason why they can abuse a company executive like that & still get away with it (perhaps they know the company considers their happiness to be more important than that of the CIO's authority). (This assumes that the employee is acting rationally, of course.)
#1. That the CIO could recognize documentation if he saw it (mine cannot).
#2. That the CIO would check that people were following the policy to maintain the documention (mine does not).
#3. That the CIO knows what the mission-critical functions are (mine cannot tell the difference between the email app running on his workstation and NAS).
I was told to find the "problem" on the "network" because one of our programmers was having trouble opening MS Word documents and he told the CIO who remembered that there had been a time about a week or so ago when his email app was very slow. Therefore, it must be a network problem. Go find the network problem. Stop telling him that there isn't one.
The pay is good and I can walk to work AND there is almost no oversight. I can work on what I want the way I want. Except for the times when the CIO feels the need to exercise his authority.
The article left out a rule that is bad for CIO's trying to protect their fiefdoms from competing departments, but great for the staff and makes the company more effective overall. Communicate with your employees about your plans and policies. There are few things as frustrating as spending a month satisfying a technical requirement, documenting it, integrating it into your environment, getting to the release date and finding out that the whole project it was built for was planned to be outsourced and the plan has been in the pipeline for six months. The CIO went to the meeting, argued the case without informing you as the technical expert of the information, and didn't ask for your opinion on the suggested alternatives.
That has happened to me several times in my professional career, and it's predictable when I'll be called in from my primary tasks to clean up the integration mess for something I was not permitted to address earlier.
Oh yeah, CIO gobble gobble gip gip goop!!
I, for one, welcome our new Chief Information Overlords
...even for sysadmin/engineer types, but useful to whom? The clueless CIO doesn't read this stuff. One other thing..."tap an Ethernet coaxial cable"...what decade are we in again? BTW, I feel like a complete moron; for some reason I can't post anything under my name, even though I'm logged in. Thanks, Chaz
If you don't have a Chief information officer who is going to handle the information security of the organization?
Better yet, who is going to handle all the business intelligence?
Jesus CHRIST. This many comments over "what is a CIO, anyway?" And the predictable whining from those underlings who *aren't* in officer positions. You sound EXACTLY like how enlisted men in the Army talk about officers. A code monkey has the luxury to bad mouth the CIO because he (or she) is allowed to focus myopically on the task at hand (namely, the product). Which, of course, is great. But myopic all the same. So much of business has NOTHING to do with the product, and EVERYTHING to do with the business. Go figure. It's also exactly why code monkeys would never want a CIO position to begin with.
Being a CIO is just as good as being a CEO, the pay rate is in the same league. I'm trying to go to grad school so I can get an MIS degree and become a CIO myself. $90-150k a year sounds VERY good to me.
A CIO can make enough money at one or two firms that they'd never have a reason to leave. But assuming you do have a reason to leave, there will always be startups.
In my experiences these are very very different. IF Google or Sun has a CIO, I expect them to know tech. If Starbucks has a CIO, I expect them to know business and have a right-hand man/woman for the real tech.
Our non-tech (but fortune 50 company) has a 60-year old female CIO who cannot tell a monitor from a rack-mount server. However, I do believe she speaks in international language of $$$.
Top three signs:
1 - CIO reads magazine articles equating "Ruby on Rails" and "multicore programming" in the same sentence,
then proceeds to plan new projects with a vision towards "massively distributed MVC, ROR, multicore Web 2.0 social applications",
(code word for slow ruby websites that seem developed by drunken monkeys).
2 - Follows advice regarding "Your ability to talk tech will go a long way to earning the respect of application development professionals."
Usually developers have close to zero tolerance for the inane utterances ("talking tech") of managerial staff,
or as it is call in technical terms, "bullsh!t".
3 - Reads articles that use dehumanizing terms to refer to technical staff ("resources"),
then proceeds to use them to form akward "complimentary" sentences:
"Bob, you are by far my most leveraged, hyper-synergic resource".
- Bonus: CIO fires the company's most experienced engineers, hires an all-Kazakhstani team,
which after six months of working without a formal design produces hundreds of slideshows
that are demoed to customers on MacOSX, extra points if shown on spanking new MacBook Airs.
From TFA...If you want to be a Controller then get a job in the accounting department. Okay, so maybe you are not a certifiable control nut. Maybe it is just a strategy you are employing because your direct reports can't get the job done. If this is the case, then control is not the solution.
Most control nuts won't admit they are control nuts.
Control nuts have communication and trust issues. Typical CIO thought process: "It MUST be someone else's problem when things go wrong, right? I know...instead of communicate effectively, I'll just micro-manage the shit out of all of you because even though I hired some of you, I don't trust any of you to do even the simplest tasks!
TFA, cont'd... Have the courage to replace those managers that aren't strong. Control won't work in the long run anyway.
Neither will continuously firing others for your lack of communication skills.
Get your s#!t together and think about what you want to execute strategically, not why struts XML config files work better than annotated class files or why you think it's fine that each intranet departmental site doesn't need a consistent navigation.
A CIO's job: If it has a convincing, positive ROI, let it happen. Otherwise, don't. That's a CIO's job.
I used to work indirectly for a well known CIO of a large computer company that pretty much violated all of these rules. My favorite was how he loved to show how technical he was by showing how he could move around in vi without using cursor keys. Of course, now he's now the CEO of a spinoff of this major computer company.
Bonus points: He has been interviewed by CIO as being one of the visionary people in the field ...
So CIO magazine... where are the interviews with the people who do exhibit these traits?
This should really be part of their interview process like the final questions on The Actor's Studio. I bet James Lipton would even do it for you.
And I work for a company that has a nearly 10 billion dollar IT budget. I'm sure we have a CIO but god only knows who that person is, where they are located or even what their actual responsibilities are. I would have to guess that most of that person's job consists of stepping on the heads of the people who report to them, putting their picture on monthly epistles to strategize the new paradigm and to exhort us to work harder for less money lest we all wind up unemployed or in Bangalore.
I'm 6'5" (on the rare occasions I stand) and I am not in management, you insensitive clod!
When he took over when he was an Army Colonel, he cracked down on various items. When he retired from the Army, a slot was made for him to remain there. Below are the list of various items he did:
On the dress code aspect, when he took over as colonel, he made an example out of a couple of Sys Admins when they showed to a meeting in blue jeans and sandals. He had them fired on the spot and escorted of the premises and off the base. A friend who worked there prior to when he showed up mentioned the place was fun to work at. When he did nights and weekends, they didn't care if you showed up dressed for comfort. When the colonel showed up that changed ! He also took away the traditional Hawaiian Shirt Friday as well. He also cracked down on people who left early on Friday, another "tradition" in the DoD contracting world.
When the colonel took over, he didn't consider the culture of the place at the time plus the culture of Colorado which is considered very casual like in dress. One thing not mentioned until now, his additional degrees are from East Coast schools like U. of Virginia. With formal rules being more important than getting the job done, the dynamic changed for the worst. I really don't to go back to that facility as long as he is there. I still keep in contact with some people who still work there. One day, there was a water problem where all the bathrooms were shutdown but people were told they could NOT leave for home early and to keep working. The basement of the building has been converted to "cube farms" from basically storage. One thing not included was more bathrooms. Even for the men you have to wait 5 or 10 minutes for a toilet stall to open up. A lot of times there are several people waiting for each stall. Complaints have so far been ignored.
Yeah, that article just proved that CIO.com is clueless.
apply to this jackass.
No. Thunderdome is the correct response. Seriously. Wii-boxing. Geek game showdown. No physical contact, and an enjoyable way for everyone else to ease the tension that conflict can bring. Don't tell them about it... just keep a console around and when the opportunity is right, take each of them under an arm and lead them off. If you do it right and pull it off, it's one of those "... hey, did you hear about so and so... he freakin' made them Wii Box!" stories that will precede you where ever you go.
;) If they call your bluff, let the geeks eat 'em alive with technical questions like, "so, is your LDAP backend X500 DIT compliant? We need it to work with our hacked together NIS/perl-fu directory. Here, we can show you the code!"
You won't even have to break the ice the first time you meet a client. It sounds nuts, but sane solutions don't solve problems and get great results. They become political and accounting decisions if left rational for too long. As for the vendors, make them fear you by telling them to have free hardware dropped off to your tech guys to play with before you even consider making a purchasing decision. After all, if this wacky device is nearly as great as they say, the geeks'll love it! Also, Cisco and Sun were kind enough to give you a full rack to play with for a few months.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
EVERY one of these damn reasons applies to my CIO. And I am my own one-man company!
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
balance between being "geeky" and being ... umm ... what's the term for someone who hangs out with suits?
That would be a Suit (nobody else would hang out with them, right?), which would make him what, suity? What a ridiculous word -- so quite appropriate.
I'll enter it in the dictionary. :)
"Good news, everyone!"
It is hard to be relevant when your job consists of begging for scraps from the CFO.
That seems pretty harsh judgment, considering that it's not a title he thought up personally. Someone else did. So you're telling me _you_ would refuse a promotion, just because the title sounds retarded? In a job you'd presumably do if it were named differently? That sounds kind of shallow.
A name is just a name. It has only as much meaning as is assigned to it. You could name the Sun server admin, say, "High Priest of the Sun", and he'll still be an admin.
Getting hung up about just a name is just as silly in either direction. Either seeking some bullshit-bingo title, or having some silly phobia about it.
Yes, the MBA world does play bullshit bingo, and tries to come up with funky meaningless words and expressions to seem like they too have their jargon. But you have to realize that some people are as much on the wrong end of it as you are. The CxO thing is so established by now, it would take a nuke to dislodge it. You might get away with changing it if you're the CEO, but even then everyone else would still talk about your CxO. Might as well just go with the flow and treat it as any other word.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, the problem is that those positions even got to be called "officer" in the first place. All of them.
"Officer" used to mean, you know, army or navy. Even using it for the police is as recent as the end of the 19'th century, though it could be argued as a continuation from the times when the city guards acted as both police and garrison. Even the use for someone who holds an office of the state, was originally reserved for judges, but, anyway, the key words were: of the state. You know, someone acting in an official government job.
So at the very least I have to wonder about the original shallow souls who thought they need an even funkier title.
Now I won't blame the ones who just get such a stupid title thrust upon them; after all, they're the victims there. But I have to wonder about the original ones who just had to invent some new titles for themselves.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
From my experience, when someone seems clueless or illogical, it's just that they're not saying which problem they're really trying to solve.
E.g., if I were to come and say that my team needs a pony, and it would be great for team morale, and double as company car too, you might think, "WTF? Is he that retarded? Who rides a pony through town to a meeting with the customers?" The issue is that I'm not solving the problem I'm claiming to. The real problem might be that my daughter wants a pony, and I figure, maybe the company can pay for it. But of course, now I can't go to a management meeting and say, "I want the company to buy my daughter a pony." So now I'll work backwards from the solution I wish ("the company should buy a pony that I can use") to an acceptable problem it would solve (e.g., "we need environmentally friendly transportation!") And maybe I already have a second phase of that plan in mind, but I'm not telling it to you yet, either.
The same applies to a lot of seemingly retarded managers. It may be just that they're not solving the problem you think, or that their job title says they should solve.
E.g., if he comes up with a vision towards "massively distributed MVC, ROR, multicore Web 2.0 social applications", maybe really he's just trying to play bullshit bingo with the CEO or the investors. You're not the one he's trying to impress, the guy signing his paycheck is.
Or maybe he's got a second phase in mind too, like that next he'll need more hardware for that, and he's already bribed by some vendor. Or that he already knows which graphics company he wants to outsource some of that to and what bribe he'll get.
Literally, I've seen one project where their visionary wanted to have at least 1MB graphics in an applet, and that was back in the dialup and ISDN days, just because his best buddy had a graphics design company, and he wanted to outsource those graphics to that. Corruption by any other name, but there you go.
Or maybe he just wants more budget and a bigger team under him, because that raises his perceived status and importance.
Or maybe he just wants to be able to keep the current team, in the face of some retarded budget allocation which would otherwise have him fire everyone now because there are no projects in the pipeline for July, only to re-hire them in August when the next projects kick in. So he's creating some grand task as some make-work solution.
Or maybe he's just strategically gaming the budget rules in advance. In a lot of places they have retarded processes like that if you didn't use all your budget this year, you get a budget cut next year. So people end up turning the heating on in March, because the winter was mild and otherwise they'd get no heating budget next year, when maybe the winter will be worse. Same here. You don't really know what you'll have to do next year, so you essentially have to burn some money in advance to be sure you'll get a budget for it next year. A case of "massively distributed MVC, ROR, multicore Web 2.0 social applications" is something so overachieving and nebulous that it can burn any amount of money you want it to burn.
Etc.
Firing everyone competent and hiring the cheapest burger flippers, well, again I've seen it done for strategic reasons.
E.g., because with the same budget you can have more people under you, which raises your own status. And some places also have rules for what your job title and/or salary can be, based on the number of people under you. Ok, it wasn't at CEO level, but I do know someone who raised from a minor team leader to mid-level manager just by having his team inflate like a blowfish. He kept hiring incompetents and still needing more... and got rewarded for it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
[X] Sorry for the typo. I was doing other stuff at the same time ... it's a holiday up here in Canuckistan ...
Also, another missing option: 11. "The solution is $INSERT_BUZZWORD" ... people seem to think that xml (to pick just one example) is like magic pixie dust, is faster than a speeding binary transfer, can leap over tall databases in a single bound, etc., when in some situations it's just kryptonite.
Wow, I really like this post. You hit the nail on the head: The CIO is absolutey not clueless, he has some other objective in mind that he keeps secret. My CIO just got voted "CIO of the year" and we all went "WTF!?" because he seems so clueless. Thinkning about it (and having your post help) he just knows how to be a "good CIO". It's a game I don't think I want to play (nor am I good at it), but the pay is good. I think I'll stay with what I enjoy, in the trenches.
Who?
I don't want to work in a mine anymore than I want to work in a nuclear power facility or a top secret biological weapons lab.
it seemed like everyone reported to our last CIO. no one liked her, the ideas from her pie hole were awful, and she was firing the people she didnt like left and right. final solution, after losing our linux lead, two tech managers, and watching her fire half the helpdesk, we fired her 1 week before christmas. of course we got a new guy who actually told us in a meeting he was a huge fan of outsourcing IT to leverage its true strengths. the CIO is a great position, every company should have one at their shareholder meetings...but then promptly return it to the supply closet.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Interesting that /. doesn't have an icon for this one. How about a picture of Cowboy Neal?
Seriously. Wii-boxing. Geek game showdown.Seriously. Wii-boxing. Geek game showdown.
What a clever idea.
No physical contact, and an enjoyable way for everyone else to ease the tension that conflict can bring.
I like it. A little theatrical but that can be fun if it doesn't get out of hand. I wonder if any other organizations are doing anything like that? Another company I could point to as an example.
It also helps justify the big screen TV, which is already in the budget. Do things like get pay-per-view during March Madness and order in wings and pizza. I'd rather have people distracted but there instead of skipping out of work to go watch the game somewhere. Or have staff fighting over telecommute days because of an event on TV. May have to ease into some of these ideas. But if I'm going to run a boiler room and push tough deadlines, I'm going to do everything I can to make it a velvet boiler room. I've worked in some sterile, oppressive places and I'm determined to be different...or at least try. It may be Polyanna but I can always go back to consulting.
Looks like day one may be toward the end of the month, so I have three more weeks to soak up inspiration. I'm a little surprised at the supportive comments and thoughtful suggestions from some of the /. crowd. I expected more "Ha-Ha! Good luck, buddy!" Or does that come later when I face plant? I just want you guys to know I'm really listening.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They ended with to thine own self be true. Maybe they should replace "true" with "all sufficient". Then we'd know that they're trolling!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This is true of all people, not just CIOs.
Someone else far more competent than me made this observation::: The truly incompetent do not know what competency is, and often they think they are the only competent person around.
People who are competent realize they do not know everything, and therefore, sometimes appear to be less competent than others.
Then the truly incompetent end up feeling that everyone else is against them and that everyone else is really stupid. When if fact, that is not usually the case.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
It must have been written by a CIO.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Actually, no offense, but I found that companion article to be far worse advice. Unless it was meant to be just funny mis-advice, and the joke went right over my head.
E.g., trusting developers and not managing them too much... Well, there's more than one kind of person. In fact, there's a whole continuum of them. At one end, there _are_ indeed people who are perfectly capable of managing themselves and who can be given the big picture and left to their own devices to finish that big chunk. At the other end, there are people who really need to be coaxed to do anything whatsoever.
As an example of the latter extreme, my ex-coleague Wally once asked for some weeks to estimate the effort to fix a trivial bug. You read it right: not time to actually fix it, but that much time to estimate how much time he'd need to fix it. He actually got it, btw. Sometimes just trusting every developer is a bad idea.
Almost all of us think we're at the former end of the spectrum, so, yes, if you ask us, every single one will say he's perfectly capable of managing himself and needs no stinking manager checking on his progress. Reality is often a whole other thing.
The right thing to do, and at that the _hard_ thing, is recognizing the right amount of management each one needs. (And if you're willing to dedicate more effort on your part to coax someone, than it would be to fire him and write the damn module yourself, I guess.) Applying the wrong amount in either direction can get bad results fast.
But at the very least, the best advice I've ever read on the topic, is, "beware the guy in the room." You know, the idea that we have this super-programmer in his own little (metaphorical) room, we're leaving him to his own devices, noone knows what he's doing, but we're confident that at the exact deadline he'll come out screaming "Eureka!" and they all lived happily ever after. Even for the guys who are capable of managing themselves and usually deliver results, do have some indication of progress being made and do track it. That way at least you'll know if he hit some hurdle right before the deadline and is too proud to ask for help.
The thing about needing to be shielded from the rest of the company... well, we would indeed very much like to be left alone with the computer and to ignore the rest of the humanity, not just the rest of the company. Whether that's also good for business, that's a whole other issue. Being isolated in your own ivory tower can lead to some very bad design decisions, based on what you _think_ the outside world needs. Plus, it's good for the morale to know at least that someone else in the company is using our programs, and we're not just moving a pile of sand from here to there, for no other purpose than to stay busy.
So basically do filter out the unneeded crap and politics, but make sure not to filter out stuff that is actually needed for those guys to understand what they're doing and why.
And finally, ok, I know that an analogy isn't supposed to be 100% equivalent to the thing it represents. But the analogy with the cat, much as I do like cats, is IMHO rather mis-leading. You don't expect the cat to do anything whatsoever, except keep you company and not damage your furniture. That's it. You just want it to like you, basically. If you need employees which just like you and don't do outright damage, yeah, take the cat analogy. If you need employees which actually finish a task by a deadline, you might need a bit more effort.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
http://www.xerratus.com/content/binary/head-up-ass.jpg
I did not say a CIO with 5-10 years experience will be making $90k. I'm saying the CIO at the startup will be making $90k.
You have to start somewhere, and nobody is going to just let you be a CIO and pay you $150k fresh out of university. You have to spend start at 90k and work your way up to 150k.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Chief_Information_Officer_(CIO)/Salary/by_City
The good news is, if you get your MIS masters, then you'll have a shot at becoming a CIO, and depending on where you work will decide how much you make.
You probably wont be working for a profitable corporation if you just are starting out, and in fact you probably wont be the CIO at all, you'll be an officer of some sort. In 5 years then you can be the CIO, and 5 years after that you can expect to be making over 150k.
The payscale site says the average CIO makes $150k.
I've got 25 yrs experience, and I've been everything from a develop to manager, project manager of 50 ppl and I've gone BACK to tech as an IT Architect/Consultant for one of the three letter Big IT firms. I make close to 150K and I'm in the Southwest. I wouldn't take the crap a CIO has to take for the money they get paid if your data is accurate. I DO have an MBA but I'm pretty sure I didn't take the BS101 class.
What exactly is the BS a CIO has to take? I am planning on being a CIO. What exactly pays as well as the CIO but with less BS? I plan on getting an MIS masters degree. I lack experience, thats my weakness.
First, $90k-$150k is what a CIO might make at some 10 person company. The money you're talking about is something that a talented senior developer can easily be making. Additionally, an MIS degree may or may not help you become a CIO. I only know one CIO personally. He works for a private company worth ~$1B and his degree is in music.
Just because some lucky people like Bill Gates can be CEO's without any experience or degrees, it does not mean the average person can become a CIO without an MIS degree.
I don't expect to be a CIO without an MIS degree.
Even if I have to get a degree from Phoenix University I'd expect it to count for more than no degree at all.
Where are startups, fresh out of college, going to find an experienced CIO they can trust?
If the CEO's are fresh out of college why would you expect them to have an experienced CIO?
CIOs do not make nearly as much money as CEOs. In the firm I work for (and this is typical), the CEO makes 7 figures, the CIO makes a few hundred thousand. Granted, they are both doing well for themselves, but the CEO could be buying private villas and yachts, while the CIO is more on the nice timeshare level.
Also, CIOs might make 90k-150k at startups, but they will make significantly more than that at large companies - over a million at the better paying s&p500-level companies.
Another downside to the CIO position: CIOs are the bitch of the C-level positions in many corporations. They often report to the CFOs or COOs rather than the CEO directly. This makes them one extra prestige-level and pay grade from the top. I disagree with this as it lowers the strategic importance of IT; I'd prefer the CIO at my company be at the same level as the CFO/COO. At many of the tech firms, the CIO is more important but not always.
None of the C-level execs have great job security. They all turn into scapegoats if issues arrive at a corporation, but the CEO receives the best "golden parachute" payout when he gets the boot, followed by the COOs and CFOs. So, if you want to work long hours with little to no job security, you might as well shoot for any of the other C-level jobs.
Lastly, my experience with senior executives is that they're smart but no smarter than the more intelligent in-the-trenches employees. This is more a compliment to the in-the-trenches folks than a negative statement about executives. There are a lot of very smart people working at lower levels throughout companies. This makes it twice as hard for the decisions of executives to come across as intelligent - the smart low-level employee could make much better decisions about his/her own area of expertise than a senior exec due to his/her detailed knowledge. However, since a senior exec operates at a much higher level, they must do the best they can and also gather as much input as possible from the smart, low-level people. C-level execs very often fail at this point due to too much ego, too little time to do things right, too little knowledge of leadership, etc. The biggest differences I see in senior execs as compared to the standard rank and file employees: 1. More ambitious in the business sense. 2. More social intelligence (this one is only sometimes true). 3. More political intelligence. 4. Luck.
I don't see them as mutually exclusive, you know? It's not like I can only worry about one issue at a time.
Yes, all the stuff you mention _are_ still problems. Additionally, I do also have contempt for shallow people who invent funny titles to sound more important, and/or funny pseudo-jargon to sound smart.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.